From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 03:27:03 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA21871; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 03:12:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA21864 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 03:11:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-25.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.95])
by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA30012;
Sat, 1 Aug 1998 12:18:06 +0200
Received: (from norbert@localhost)
by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA00294;
Sat, 1 Aug 1998 13:12:11 +0200
Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 13:12:11 +0200
Message-Id: <199808011112.NAA00294@quill>
From: Norbert Bollow
Prefer-Language: de, en, fr
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
CC: ERIC@VM.SE.LSOFT.COM
In-reply-to: <199808010519.WAA11795@web.webcoach.com> (RAF@CU.NIH.GOV)
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I wrote:
> > b) Such a "probe failed" message MUST NOT be sent with MAIL FROM:<>
> > In fact, RFC821 is very clear that e-mail messages are supposed to
> > have a good reverse-path
> > [..]
> > and later the exception of bounces is introduced with the words
Roger Fajman writes:
> RFC 821 isn't the whole story on this issue. Other RFCs have introduced
> the principle that some messages may be sent with a null MAIL FROM.
Ok, but still there is no RFC which would allow any software product to
start sending arbitrary kinds of error messages with a null envelope
sender.
> RFC 1894 states that Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs) are to be sent
> with a null MAIL FROM address. While a DSN may be a bounce message, it
> may also be a report of successful delivery. RFC 2298 states that
> Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) are also to be sent with a
> null MAIL FROM address.
Ok, you are right that both DSNs and MDNs are further exceptions to the
general rule that e-mail messages are supposed to have a valid, non-null
reverse path.
> Also note the following text in RFC 821:
>
> MAIL (MAIL)
>
> ... In some types of error
> reporting messages (for example, undeliverable mail
> notifications) the reverse-path may be null (see Example 7).
>
> This suggests that there could be messages other than bounces that
> have a null MAIL FROM.
Sure. This leaves room for later RFCs to introduce other kinds of error
messages which can also be sent with a null reverse-path.
But note the wording "In _some_ types of error reporting messages (...)
the reverse-path may be null". This does not give any arbitrary software
package the right to invent new types of error reporting messages and
send them with null reverse path without having the new type of error
reporting message properly reviewed and specified in an RFC so that
people who develop spam filters (like e.g. Ron) and those who develop
bounce-handlers (like e.g. me) and also developers of others kinds of
software that might be affected by this are properly warned and enabled
to make their software react properly to the new types of messages.
So far, the only situation when an entity A can legally send something
with null return path to another entity B is when A needs to make some
kind of status report about an e-mail message (with non-null return
path) which was sent by B.
-- NB.
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 10:42:06 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA28110; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 10:36:11 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from CU.NIH.GOV (cu.nih.gov [128.231.160.111]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA28103 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 10:36:03 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199808011736.KAA28103@honor.greatcircle.com>
To: nb@thinkcoach.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
cc: ERIC@VM.SE.LSOFT.COM
From: "Roger Fajman"
Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 13:37:44 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> Ok, you are right that both DSNs and MDNs are further exceptions to the
> general rule that e-mail messages are supposed to have a valid, non-null
> reverse path.
>
> > Also note the following text in RFC 821:
> >
> > MAIL (MAIL)
> >
> > ... In some types of error
> > reporting messages (for example, undeliverable mail
> > notifications) the reverse-path may be null (see Example 7).
> >
> > This suggests that there could be messages other than bounces that
> > have a null MAIL FROM.
>
> Sure. This leaves room for later RFCs to introduce other kinds of error
> messages which can also be sent with a null reverse-path.
>
> But note the wording "In _some_ types of error reporting messages (...)
> the reverse-path may be null". This does not give any arbitrary software
> package the right to invent new types of error reporting messages and
> send them with null reverse path without having the new type of error
> reporting message properly reviewed and specified in an RFC so that
> people who develop spam filters (like e.g. Ron) and those who develop
> bounce-handlers (like e.g. me) and also developers of others kinds of
> software that might be affected by this are properly warned and enabled
> to make their software react properly to the new types of messages.
>
> So far, the only situation when an entity A can legally send something
> with null return path to another entity B is when A needs to make some
> kind of status report about an e-mail message (with non-null return
> path) which was sent by B.
>
> -- NB.
That is debatable, I think. There is no wording in RFC 821 that says
that only types of messages authorized by a standards-track RFC may use
a null MAIL FROM. When RFC 821 was written, spam did not exist, so the
issue wasn't considered. But even the draft revision to RFC 821 does
not take a firm position on this issue. See the document at
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-07.txt
The mailing list for the working group is drums@cs.utk.edu. To be
added, write to drums-request@cs.utk.edu. But the working group is
trying to get both this document and the RFC 822 revision out the door,
so it may well not want to consider this issue at this late date.
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 19:26:11 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA03428; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 19:10:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from camel8.mindspring.com (camel8.mindspring.com [207.69.200.58]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA03421 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 19:10:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from micron (pool-207-205-187-4.clev.grid.net [207.205.187.4])
by camel8.mindspring.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id WAA29996
for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 22:16:53 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <199808012214410910.0038D6F5@mail.mindspring.com>
X-Mailer: Calypso Version 2.40.41.05
Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1998 22:14:41 -0400
From: "ron40xc"
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: ownership change?
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
how do we change ownership with a majordomo list?
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 19:40:38 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA03664; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 19:35:48 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA03657 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 19:35:40 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id VAA07576 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 21:42:04 -0500 (CDT)
Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id VAA18819 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 21:42:02 -0500 (CDT)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Message-Id: <199808020242.VAA18819@Venus.mcs.net>
Subject: Re: individualized probe messages
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 21:42:01 -0500 (CDT)
In-Reply-To: <000101bdbc98$d33c7ed0$017b7b0a@gillette> from "Tom Neff" at Jul 31, 98 11:35:20 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
When I wrote [about getting a bounce for an address that is not on to the
list because a member must be forwarding it there],
| > Probe messages work only if the refusing site sends you back the text, or
| > sends you back your outgoing subject, or at least returns something that
| > distinguishes one probe message from the others. Prodigy tells you only
| > that such-and-such a user ID is not valid: no text, no Received: headers
| > for the trip from your site to Prodigy, no trace of your Subject:,
| > nothing...
Tom Neff replied,
| Actually there is a way around this problem if you have forwarding/alias
| control at a site, i.e., you can configure your local mail transfer agent
| (MTA) so that many addresses all deliver to you.
Operative word: "if". Write it, as Lulu sang, across the sky with letters
that would sore a thousand feet high. If you don't control the domain's
addressing -- if you are a user on someone else's machine or a customer of
an ISP whose MTA doesn't do VERPs or even suffixing -- then Tom's idea is
something to dream, not to do.
| Instead of (or in addition to) serializing the Subject header in each probe
| message, you also serialize the From: and Errors-To: headers as follows:
|
| From: test01347@mybox.mydomain.com
| Errors-To: errs01347@mybox.mydomain.com
| Subject: List Test #001347
|
| This is a list test message - please ignore it.
Most MTAs ignore Errors-To:, but if you have control over the domain and
can give yourself as many addresses in it as you like, you can use them
as envelope senders; in other words, you're simulating qmail's VERPs, as
I said before and as Dave Sill just mentioned.
| Now even the most uncooperative Prodigy-class mail agent can't help revealing
| which message it's bouncing, because each one will be delivered to a unique
| "userid." Even if they omit a To: header in the bounce, you can examine the
| Received: headers for the delivery address your local MTA saw.
They do omit the To: header, but either their MTA or Smail on WWA was filling
it into Apparently-To: as well as Received: ... for. By using my own logname
and the list's aliases as envelope senders, I eventually tracked down the
culprit. Skip the indented part and go to my next quote from Mr. Neff if
you've read my previous posts of this story:
Based on the timing of the bounces, I knew that the forwarder was a digest-
mode subscriber who was not on the list's sublist. That left 1220 suspects.
With seven envelope sender addresses at my disposal, I divided the 1220
into seven groups of 174 or 175 and sent out seven first-round probes, one
to each group.
About ten minutes later one of them bounced. The addressee of the NDN was
all I had to go by, but it narrowed the field to 175 addresses. Some sub-
scribers replied to probe #1 to assure me they received it, and I answered
thanks, but they didn't have to.
I divided them into seven groups of twenty-five and repeated the process,
assuring recipients in the text that still being there in the second round
didn't mean they were more suspect, just that they were less lucky.
One second-round probe bounced, narrowing it to twenty-five people. I
divided them into seven groups of three or four and sent the third round of
seven probes. One bounced, and there were three people left.
In the fourth round I wrote to them individually with three different
envelope senders, and one bounced. Officer, arrest that woman! I booted
her from the list.
If only the NDNs from Prodigy had included the To: or Subject: or Received:
or even Message-Id: of the undelivered piece (I could have blind carboned
all probes to myself and had a list of which Message-Id: was on whose, or
I could have encoded the addressee into the Message-Id:) it would have been
completely unncessary. OK, so I'd still have had to send 1220 probes, but
not 1220+175+24+3=1422. And I'd have had the answer far sooner and not had
to spend all that extra time on line when I had other things to get done.
| This is particularly easy to do with today's "virtual servers" that forward
| anything@yourdomain.com to the same address.
Not everyone has a personal domain, and I have no intention to shell out the
costs of having one (not only for the registration but also for the MX ser-
vice from an ISP) when I have no need for it except to cope with Prodigy's
poor netizenship.
From list-managers-owner Sat Aug 1 20:40:37 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA04139; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 20:25:01 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [140.174.78.69]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA04121 for ; Sat, 1 Aug 1998 20:24:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA26699
Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1998 20:31:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Roger B.A. Klorese"
To: ron40xc
cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: ownership change?
In-Reply-To: <199808012214410910.0038D6F5@mail.mindspring.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sat, 1 Aug 1998, ron40xc wrote:
> how do we change ownership with a majordomo list?
With the normal setup, where it is hard-wired into the system's mail
aliases, you ask your Majordomo-Owner to do so. If eithr of the following
optional extended setups is in use, you can do it yourself:
- if the site is running MajorCool, you can change the owner field there.
- if the site is using a separate unpublished mailing list as the list of
owners, subscribe the new one and unsubscribe the old one.
--
ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG
2215-R Market Street #576 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF
"There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 01:32:03 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA07916; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:48:46 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from eagle.ns.net (eagle.ns.net [204.75.146.20]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA07909 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:48:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from monkeys.com (rfg.ns.net [207.159.10.82])
by eagle.ns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA13650
for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:55:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by monkeys.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA06491
for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 00:57:05 -0700
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 01 Aug 1998 01:17:07 -0400.
<199808010513.WAA17158@honor.greatcircle.com>
From: "Ronald F. Guilmette"
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 00:57:05 -0700
Message-ID: <6489.902044625@monkeys.com>
X-Processed-By: Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter, Version 0.90
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
In message <199808010513.WAA17158@honor.greatcircle.com>,
"Roger Fajman" wrote:
>This suggests that there could be messages other than bounces that
>have a null MAIL FROM.
>
>LISTSERV's "probe failed" message sounds to me like an "error
>reporting message".
You are obviously using a VERY loose definition of the term.
If I decide to write a letter (or have some automated bot do it for me)
to some sysadmins somewhere, telling him that he's a bonehead for con-
tinuing to run an open mail relay, is that an ``error reporting message''
also?? Well... you could call it that.
Where do you draw the line?
I believe that the only sensible place to draw it is to say that the term
``error reporting messages'' (in the context of the relevant SMTP RFCs)
refers to error reporting messages having to do with (and/or generated by)
the SMTP mail transport system itself, not by mere clients thereof. Other-
wise, these ``error reporting messages'' become fair game, and _everybody_
can start calling _their_ messages ``error reporting messages''. (``You're
a dork, and you ice isn't cold enough!'' There! Now _that's_ an error
message! :-) Or how about ``Your request to Majordodo failed because it
was unintelligible and unparsable.''? Or how about ``This is the vacation
program. Joe will read your mail when he gets back from the Bahamas in
two weeks. Until then, live in envy.''?)
I am merely a client of the SMTP mail transport system. So are _all_ of
the various mailing list packages, including Listserv. I don't screw
around and go out of my way to make my messages look like bounces (even
though doing so might appear to be convenient for me in some special
cases... just as it appears to be for some spammers) and I don't believe
that Listserv should be crossing this line either. Again, Listserv isn't
a part of the SMTP transport system, it is a mere client of that system,
as am I.
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
-- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 02:59:27 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA09911; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 02:43:01 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [140.174.78.69]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA09904 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 02:42:54 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id CAA03607
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 02:47:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Roger B.A. Klorese"
To: "Ronald F. Guilmette"
cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
In-Reply-To: <6489.902044625@monkeys.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> Again, Listserv isn't
> a part of the SMTP transport system, it is a mere client of that system,
> as am I.
Really? If it connects to an SMTP server directly and has an SMTP
session with it, how is it any less "a part of the SMTP transport system"
than the sendmail invocation that's called by Majordomo?
--
ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG
2215-R Market Street #576 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF
"There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 08:01:49 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA14604; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 07:40:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA14592 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 07:39:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from newmicronpc (slip-32-100-103-114.ct.us.ibm.net [32.100.103.114]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id IAA10643; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 08:46:15 -0600 (MDT)
From: "Tom Neff"
To:
Subject: Re: individualized probe messages
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 10:55:15 -0400
Message-ID: <000001bdbe25$8edc1fa0$72676420@newmicronpc>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0
Importance: Normal
In-Reply-To: <199808020800.BAA08091@honor.greatcircle.com>
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I appreciate the info on David Tamkin's personal access level, budget, plans and
so forth, but the serialized-From technique has potential value to those
listmanagers who, through whatever quirk of fate, do have a machine (if only a
Linux box) whose mail they can configure, or who have access to a virtual domain
(their own or a friend's). List-Managers is for the benefit of all members, not
a private chatline, so I hope others get a chance to use the trick.
I should emphasize (if it's not already obvious) that the From: addresses,
machine and domain you use for the serialized probe need have nothing to do with
the machine or domain that the mailing list itself emanates from. So you don't
have to have full mail control over that (possibly commercial or centrally
managed) host. Just your own little node, real or virtual.
> From: "David W. Tamkin"
> Operative word: "if". Write it, as Lulu sang, across the sky with letters
> that would sore a thousand feet high. ...
We all have our soar points...
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 10:01:55 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA15602; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 09:45:19 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from eagle.ns.net (eagle.ns.net [204.75.146.20]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA15593 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 09:45:06 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from monkeys.com (rfg.ns.net [207.159.10.82])
by eagle.ns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA26904
for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 09:51:26 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by monkeys.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA21563
for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 09:54:07 -0700
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 02 Aug 1998 02:47:56 -0700.
From: "Ronald F. Guilmette"
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 09:54:07 -0700
Message-ID: <21561.902076847@monkeys.com>
X-Processed-By: Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter, Version 0.90
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
In message ,
"Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote:
>On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>> Again, Listserv isn't
>> a part of the SMTP transport system, it is a mere client of that system,
>> as am I.
>
>Really? If it connects to an SMTP server directly and has an SMTP
>session with it, how is it any less "a part of the SMTP transport system"
>than the sendmail invocation that's called by Majordomo?
Does it do MX resolution?
Does it cycle through the MXes, trying various ones until it finds a live
one?
Does it do queuing?
Does it do retries?
Does it connect to *non-local* SMTP servers?
If the answers to all of the above are ``yes'', then heck! Let's just
throw away our MTAs and use Listserv instead, because the MTAs are ob-
viously just redundant excess baggage.
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
-- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 13:00:40 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA17281; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 12:48:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dt053nd2.san.rr.com (dt053nd2.san.rr.com [204.210.34.210]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA17274 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 12:48:31 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dal.net (Studded@localhost [127.0.0.1])
by dt053nd2.san.rr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA04230;
Sun, 2 Aug 1998 12:54:49 -0700 (PDT)
(envelope-from Studded@dal.net)
Message-ID: <35C4C409.AEB8ECED@dal.net>
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 12:54:49 -0700
From: Studded
Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.6-STABLE-0507 i386)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: "Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom"
CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: "Reviewing" mailing list? (Was: Re: Lyris)
References:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom wrote:
> (3) inform me whenever someone attempts
> to REVIEW any of my mailing lists (I have my lists configured to
> disallow such things, but I still like to know when they try),
You made the above statement in reference to praise of lyris. I am not
familiar with the phrase "review a mailing list" and I was wondering if
you could expand on what that means, how it is detected and why it is
undesirable.
Thanks for any help,
Doug
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 13:15:46 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA17431; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 13:04:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA17424 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 13:04:27 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id PAA28045 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:10:57 -0500 (CDT)
Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id PAA29678 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:10:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Message-Id: <199808022010.PAA29678@Mercury.mcs.net>
Subject: Re: individualized probe messages
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:10:56 -0500 (CDT)
In-Reply-To: <000001bdbe25$8edc1fa0$72676420@newmicronpc> from "Tom Neff" at Aug 2, 98 10:55:15 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Background: I posted about a problem I had had to deal with without the
facilities that many of you have at your disposal. Tom Neff then posted a
follow-up that offered a solution I could not have used. When I responded
that yes, others can do that, but I had to settle for a less efficient ap-
proach, he rejoined,
| ... the serialized-From technique has potential value to [many]
| listmanagers ...
Yes, no question. It has potential value to all who can use it. It
certainly beats the heck out of what I had to do.
| List-Managers is for the benefit of all members, not
| a private chatline, so I hope others get a chance to use the trick.
I hope so too, but by the same token that "all members" includes those whose
situations are unlike mine, it also includes those whose situations are like
mine.
| I should emphasize (if it's not already obvious) that the From: addresses,
| machine and domain you use for the serialized probe need have nothing to do
| with the machine or domain that the mailing list itself emanates from.
Yes, the From: address and the From_ address can differ from the true send-
ing point and from one another. It was the From_ address that mattered that
time, and that is not as easy to set for a non-admin as the From: address.
While at the time I knew how to rig the local part of the From_ address, I
did not yet know a reliable way to point From_ to a remote address (I do
now). Had I known, there would have been nine available return addresses
instead of seven and not 1422 probe letters but at most 1374. (The other
providers where I had email addresses don't support plus-suffixing either.)
| So you don't have to have full mail control over that (possibly commercial
| or centrally managed) host. Just your own little node, real or virtual.
But you do need to come up with as many distinct addresses as there are
subscribers to whom you need to send the probe message, and they have to be
such that mail to them will reach you. If you have your own domain, whether
real or virtual, you can do that. If you have suffixed addressing available,
you can do that.
If you have neither available but you run a mailing list anyway, you still
have a right to be on list-managers.
| > Operative word: "if". Write it, as Lulu sang, across the sky with letters
| > that would sore a thousand feet high. ...
|
| We all have our soar points...
Oops ... sorry for the typo, and clever way to point it out, Mr. Neff.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 15:59:24 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA18848; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:41:14 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from nisto.com (nisto.com [207.34.64.161]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA18841 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:41:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.34.64.181] by nisto.com
with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 1.2); Sun, 2 Aug 1998 16:51:58 -0600
Message-Id:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 16:51:32 -0600
To: list-header@list.nisto.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM,
ListMom-Talk@lists.SKYLIST.net
From: Grant Neufeld
Subject: List-Probe field proposal
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Here are the relevant parts from a new internet-draft I'm preparing. The
working form of the document itself can be found at
http://www.nisto.com/listspec/#DOCUMENTS
Please address all follow up to the list-header mailing list
,
or to me privately. Thanks.
The List-Probe Message Header Field for
Identifying Mail List Probe Messages
Abstract
This document defines the message header field "List-Probe"
to be used in consistently identifying mail list probe messages.
1. Introduction
Many MTAs (mail transfer agents - mail servers) in use today do not
provide adequate details when failing to transfer mail messages. In
particular, when email is automatically forwarded from a recipient
address to a second address that is 'bouncing' incoming mail, the
error response messages may not properly including the original
(forwarding) recipient address.
To help deal with this problem, many mailing list managers have taken
to sending out individualized "probe" messages. The probes include
enough identifying information - even if the original recipient
address is not included in the error response - that the forwarding
address can be properly identified.
The drawback to this approach is that valid recipients will receive
the probe messages in their mail - an unfortunate waste of time and
resources.
This document defines a message header field, List-Probe, which will
allow MUAs (mail user agents - email clients) to identify and
automatically discard probe messages so the user does not have to be
involved in the process. If a probe message is received by a MUA,
the recipient address is valid, so the probe does not need to be
responded to (and can safely be discarded) since probes are only
seeking error responses.
2. The List-Probe Header Field
The List-Probe message header field MUST contain a single RFC822
format recipient address. The field MAY also contain round-bracket
enclosed comments.
For example, a probe message for the address user@some.host might
look like:
List-Probe: user@some.host
To: user@some.host
From: admin@server.host
Errors-To: probe@server.host
Subject: Probe message - Please ignore
We are checking for invalid email addresses.
Since you have received this message, your email is valid.
Please discard this message - DO NOT REPLY.
Our appologies for the interruption.
3. Security Considerations
Since the originating system is responsible for introducing the
List-Probe field into the message, with the expectation that valid
recipients will discard the message, it is expected that no unwanted
message discarding will occur.
There is a danger that senders of unwanted bulk email could make use
of the List-Probe field in validating recipient addresses. To provide
users with the option to avoid this, MTAs MUST provide an option to
ignore the List-Probe field (not deleting the messages), allowing the
user to see the probe messages. In the case of ignoring the
List-Probe field, the MTA MAY hilite the message in some manner to
alert the user that it is a probe message.
Mail list processors SHOULD NOT allow user-originated List-Probe
fields to pass through to their lists, lest they confuse the user and
have the potential to create security problems.
--
http://www.nisto.com/ O-
MIME PGP: http://www.nisto.com/grant/pgpkey.kagi.txt
838B 977B 080E 1B61 BA78 D159 6ABB 8CBA A825 0CDF
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 16:29:24 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA19112; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 16:12:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from nisto.com (nisto.com [207.34.64.161]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA19105 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 16:11:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [207.34.64.181] by nisto.com
with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 1.2); Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:23:08 -0600
Message-Id:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:22:43 -0600
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Grant Neufeld
Subject: The List- headers are now an RFC
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
This is a request for you to implement support for the List- header
fields defined in RFC2369. This will make mail list access easier for
your users.
The List- fields provide you with a standard method by which you can
consistently describe your mailing lists' command syntax so that client
applications can implement an interface to make list access easier for
users.
As they are adopted and supported by email software developers, the List
header fields will make it easier for users to interact with email
lists.
The currently defined fields are List-Subscribe, List-Unsubscribe,
List-Help, List-Post, List-Owner and List-Archive. They describe
commands for subscribing, unsubscribing, retrieving help information,
posting to the list, contacting a human administrator and accessing
message archives.
As an example, for the list-managers list, the fields could be something like:
List-Subscribe:
List-Unsubscribe:
List-Help:
List-Post:
List-Owner:
List-Archive: ,
,
Implementation guidelines for list managers and administrators are
available at:
Extended details on the List header fields are available from:
A mailing list for discussion is available at:
or
Information on the format of mailto URLs:
Thanks!
--
http://www.nisto.com/ O-
MIME PGP: http://www.nisto.com/grant/pgpkey.kagi.txt
838B 977B 080E 1B61 BA78 D159 6ABB 8CBA A825 0CDF
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 17:44:24 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA19631; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:33:43 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dt053nd2.san.rr.com (dt053nd2.san.rr.com [204.210.34.210]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA19624 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:33:35 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dal.net (Studded@localhost [127.0.0.1])
by dt053nd2.san.rr.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA05452
for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 17:40:08 -0700 (PDT)
(envelope-from Studded@dal.net)
Message-ID: <35C506E8.4405AB9D@dal.net>
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 17:40:08 -0700
From: Studded
Organization: Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2.6-STABLE-0507 i386)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: "Reviewing" mailing list? (Was: Re: Lyris)
References: <35C4C409.AEB8ECED@dal.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Studded wrote:
>
> Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom wrote:
>
> > (3) inform me whenever someone attempts
> > to REVIEW any of my mailing lists (I have my lists configured to
> > disallow such things, but I still like to know when they try),
>
> You made the above statement in reference to praise of lyris. I am not
> familiar with the phrase "review a mailing list" and I was wondering if
> you could expand on what that means, how it is detected and why it is
> undesirable.
I got some answers to this already, thanks. The listserv (and others?)
'review' command does what 'who' does on majordomo.
Doug
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 18:59:44 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA20194; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 18:39:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from quilla.tezcat.com (quilla.tezcat.com [204.128.247.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA20187 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 18:39:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [208.145.52.97] (adamb.tezcat.com [208.145.52.97])
by quilla.tezcat.com (8.8.5/8.8.5/tezcat-96091001) with SMTP id UAA14356
for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 20:46:12 -0500 (CDT)
Message-Id: <199808030146.UAA14356@quilla.tezcat.com>
Subject: Re: "Reviewing" mailing list? (Was: Re: Lyris)
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 20:47:08 -0500
x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998
From: Adam Bailey
cc:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On 8/2/98 2:54 PM, Studded wrote...
>Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom wrote:
>
>> (3) inform me whenever someone attempts
>> to REVIEW any of my mailing lists (I have my lists configured to
>> disallow such things, but I still like to know when they try),
>
> You made the above statement in reference to praise of lyris. I am not
>familiar with the phrase "review a mailing list" and I was wondering if
>you could expand on what that means, how it is detected and why it is
>undesirable.
The REVIEW command/procedure, in some packages, produces a list of all
the subscribers to a list.
Back in The Good Old Days(tm) when the net was a reasonably safe place to
be, anyone (or, at least, any subscriber) could find out who else was on
the list, so they'd know who all they were talking to (individual
subscribers would still have the ability to hide just their
subscription). But with the rise of UBE and other forms of mass email
abuse, most lists are now closed to any form of REVIEW (as well they
should be).
--
Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois
adamb@tezcat.com | "Logic is the art of going wrong with
adamkb@aol.com | confidence." - George Bernard Shaw
Finger for PGP | http://www.tezcat.com/~adamb/
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 19:55:36 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA20796; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 19:44:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA20789 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 19:44:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id VAA06317; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:50:35 -0500 (CDT)
Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id VAA02722; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:50:35 -0500 (CDT)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Message-Id: <199808030250.VAA02722@Venus.mcs.net>
Subject: Re: "Reviewing" mailing list? (Was: Re: Lyris)
To: Studded@dal.net (Studded)
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:50:34 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com
In-Reply-To: <35C4C409.AEB8ECED@dal.net> from "Studded" at Aug 2, 98 12:54:49 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Doug asked,
| Vince Sabio, Alpha Listmom wrote:
|
| > (3) inform me whenever someone attempts
| > to REVIEW any of my mailing lists (I have my lists configured to
| > disallow such things, but I still like to know when they try),
|
| You made the above statement in reference to praise of lyris. I am not
| familiar with the phrase "review a mailing list" and I was wondering if
| you could expand on what that means, how it is detected and why it is
| undesirable.
The word "review" has different meanings for different list packages. Vince
appears to be referring to it as a command sent to certain listservers to
request a copy of the membership roster.
There was a time when few lists needed to disable that command; now many
do, because of the spam problem, and the rest have to allow only members
or privileged members to use it.
In other software the word is used differently: a member of an unmoderated
list is said to be on "review status" if his or her submissions are diverted
for moderation rather than being sent right out, either because he or she is
new to the list or because he or she has violated posting guidelines in the
past.
The ambiguities can be funny sometimes: once a member sent the following com-
mand to me (at an address that reaches my eyes and does not interpret com-
mands, but if I know what they mean I carry them out), apostrophes and all:
request '*out*'
Thinking it was a request to get out, but not being positive, I shut her
subscription off without purging it and wrote to her to ask for clarifica-
tion. She said no, she didn't want to unsub; she was trying to get a copy of
the membership roster. I turned her subscription back on, sent her the list
activity she had missed, and explained that I don't give the list out.
About two years later another member sent this:
request *out*
with the same words and the same asterisks but no apostrophes. So as before,
I shut her subscription off without purging it and asked her to elucidate,
telling her about the previous incident. She replied that no, she wasn't
trying to get the membership roster, she wanted to unsubscribe. So I thanked
her for getting back to me and purged her subscription.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 20:55:36 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA21516; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 20:50:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from CU.NIH.GOV (silkt.nih.gov [128.231.160.112]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA21509 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 20:50:48 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199808030350.UAA21509@honor.greatcircle.com>
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: "Roger Fajman"
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:54:58 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> In message <199808010513.WAA17158@honor.greatcircle.com>,
> "Roger Fajman" wrote:
>
> >This suggests that there could be messages other than bounces that
> >have a null MAIL FROM.
> >
> >LISTSERV's "probe failed" message sounds to me like an "error
> >reporting message".
>
> You are obviously using a VERY loose definition of the term.
>
> If I decide to write a letter (or have some automated bot do it for me)
> to some sysadmins somewhere, telling him that he's a bonehead for con-
> tinuing to run an open mail relay, is that an ``error reporting message''
> also?? Well... you could call it that.
>
> Where do you draw the line?
>
> I believe that the only sensible place to draw it is to say that the term
> ``error reporting messages'' (in the context of the relevant SMTP RFCs)
> refers to error reporting messages having to do with (and/or generated by)
> the SMTP mail transport system itself, not by mere clients thereof. Other-
> wise, these ``error reporting messages'' become fair game, and _everybody_
> can start calling _their_ messages ``error reporting messages''. (``You're
> a dork, and you ice isn't cold enough!'' There! Now _that's_ an error
> message! :-) Or how about ``Your request to Majordodo failed because it
> was unintelligible and unparsable.''? Or how about ``This is the vacation
> program. Joe will read your mail when he gets back from the Bahamas in
> two weeks. Until then, live in envy.''?)
>
> I am merely a client of the SMTP mail transport system. So are _all_ of
> the various mailing list packages, including Listserv. I don't screw
> around and go out of my way to make my messages look like bounces (even
> though doing so might appear to be convenient for me in some special
> cases... just as it appears to be for some spammers) and I don't believe
> that Listserv should be crossing this line either. Again, Listserv isn't
> a part of the SMTP transport system, it is a mere client of that system,
> as am I.
>
>
> -- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
> -- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
> -- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/
I believe that the original motivation for the presence of the null MAIL FROM
in RFC 821 is the prevention of loops. That's why RFC 821 says that error
messages should use it, why DSNs use it, and why MDNs use it. It doesn't
matter what's generating the message. MDNs are generated by user agents,
not SMTP servers. By your definition, they would not be allowed to use
a null MAIL FROM.
Now LISTSERV's probe failed message is not likely to cause a loop if it
did not have a null MAIL FROM, but only because LISTSERV has other measures
to keep that from happening.
There are other cases when a list server might need to use a null MAIL
FROM. For example, suppose that it forwards copies of error messages
received as a result of messages sent from the command processing
address to the list server maintainers. Such messages might cause
a loop if they bounce and the MAIL FROM is not null.
My main point is that there are things other than bounce messages that
are specified by Internet standards track documents to use a null MAIL
FROM. They can't be considered to be spam.
From list-managers-owner Sun Aug 2 21:10:37 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA21752; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:08:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from eagle.ns.net (eagle.ns.net [204.75.146.20]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA21745 for ; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:07:57 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from monkeys.com (rfg.ns.net [207.159.10.82])
by eagle.ns.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA23115;
Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:14:26 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by monkeys.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA10273;
Sun, 2 Aug 1998 21:17:14 -0700
To: list-header@peyak.nisto.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM,
ListMom-Talk@lists.SKYLIST.net
Subject: Re: List-Probe field proposal
In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 02 Aug 1998 16:51:32 -0600.
From: "Ronald F. Guilmette"
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998 21:17:13 -0700
Message-ID: <10271.902117833@monkeys.com>
X-Processed-By: Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter, Version 0.90
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
In message ,
Grant Neufeld wrote:
>Here are the relevant parts from a new internet-draft I'm preparing. The
>working form of the document itself can be found at
>http://www.nisto.com/listspec/#DOCUMENTS
>
>Please address all follow up to the list-header mailing list
>,
>or to me privately. Thanks.
>
> The List-Probe Message Header Field for
> Identifying Mail List Probe Messages
>
>Abstract
>
> This document defines the message header field "List-Probe"
> to be used in consistently identifying mail list probe messages.
>
>
>1. Introduction
>
> Many MTAs (mail transfer agents - mail servers) in use today do not
> provide adequate details when failing to transfer mail messages. In
> particular, when email is automatically forwarded from a recipient
> address to a second address that is 'bouncing' incoming mail, the
> error response messages may not properly including the original
> (forwarding) recipient address.
>
> To help deal with this problem, many mailing list managers have taken
> to sending out individualized "probe" messages. The probes include
> enough identifying information - even if the original recipient
> address is not included in the error response - that the forwarding
> address can be properly identified.
>
> The drawback to this approach is that valid recipients will receive
> the probe messages in their mail - an unfortunate waste of time and
> resources.
>
> This document defines a message header field, List-Probe, which will
> allow MUAs (mail user agents - email clients) to identify and
> automatically discard probe messages so the user does not have to be
> involved in the process. If a probe message is received by a MUA,
> the recipient address is valid, so the probe does not need to be
> responded to (and can safely be discarded) since probes are only
> seeking error responses.
A question if you don't mind...
Isn't this basically the exact same sort of facility that the SMTP VRFY
command is supposed to provide? If so, why write a new RFC? Why not
just get people to implement the old one(s)?
It seems to me that a lot of people out there disable the VRFY command in
their MTAs out of a misplaced concern for ``security''. So even if you
come up with a new way of verifying addresses as being really and truly
alive and active, won't people just disable _that_ also?
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
-- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 02:25:38 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA24975; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 00:58:16 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com (tan7.NCR.COM [192.127.94.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA24968 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 00:58:07 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from bhoule@localhost)
by sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) id BAA20596;
Mon, 3 Aug 1998 01:03:01 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bill Houle
Message-Id: <199808030803.BAA20596@sparc.sandiegoca.ncr.com>
Subject: Re: ownership change?
To: rogerk@QueerNet.ORG (Roger B.A. Klorese)
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 01:03:00 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: ron40xc@mindspring.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: from "Roger B.A. Klorese" at Aug 1, 98 08:31:13 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Roger B.A. Klorese said:
>
> - if the site is running MajorCool, you can change the owner field there.
To clarify, "there" is the list configuration [file]. And this is
not a blanket statement, as implementation of the "owner" keyword
is entirely optional and may not be present even if MajorCool is
installed.
--bill
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 02:40:42 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA24073; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:45:08 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA24063 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:45:06 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA03680 for ; Fri, 31 Jul 1998 07:04:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 2372 invoked by uid 3995); 31 Jul 1998 14:10:20 -0000
Message-ID: <19980731141020.2371.qmail@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
From: Dave Sill
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: "probe failed" (was: Re: Unhelpful Bounce Of The Week)
In-Reply-To: <30704.901867732@monkeys.com>
References: <2.2.32.19980731024749.01086a74@pop.ma.ultranet.com>
<30704.901867732@monkeys.com>
X-Mailer: VM 6.34 under 20.3 "Vatican City" XEmacs Lucid
Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA
X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote:
>
>Why does it make any sense to send yet another message to an address that
>you already know and believe is dead?
Because you don't know it's dead--you just know it's bouncing. I've
seen several cases where bounced messages were *also* successfully
delivered. If you don't send the user a message saying "Hey, your mail
is bouncing", they may never realize it.
-Dave
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 02:47:45 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA23842; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:42:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA23832 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:42:06 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mail.wavefront.com (ns.wavefront.com [204.73.244.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id NAA13012 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:36:55 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by mail.wavefront.com (8.6.10/SMI-4.1.R931202)
id PAA12110; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:46:58 -0500
Message-Id: <199807282046.PAA12110@mail.wavefront.com>
Received: from pm3-47.wavefront.net(206.146.214.47), claiming to be "clift.wavefront.com"
via SMTP by ns.wavefront.com, id smtpdAAAa12104; Tue Jul 28 20:46:48 1998
Comments: Authenticated sender is
From: "Steven Clift"
Organization: Democracies Online
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:35:21 -0500
Subject: Major E-mail Announce Lists
Reply-to: clift@publicus.net
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v2.54)
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Does anyone have advice on reliable providers of e-mail
announcement list services in the U.S.?
A project I work with may need support for web based
subscription to a one-way announcement list. It is hard to
estimate the number of subscribers but to say between 5,000
to 50,000. About one message a week from mid-September into
November would be sent. With a few extras around election time.
I am interested in systems that ask the web form subscribers to
verify their address by glancing at it on a confirmation page,
but feel a confirm reply e-mail message might reduce the number
of subscribers. I am also interested in systems that use the
listserv "probe" feature or some other feature that can be used
to clean out bad addresses. The list would potentially be used
lightly in 1999 and regeared up for 2000 with non-partisan
activities related to the Presidential election.
Any suggestions on who to get a bid from on such a list? And
who has the best track record with such matters?
Thanks,
Steven Clift
-------------------------------------------------------
Steven Clift - Public Strategies for the Online World
3454 Fremont Ave S T: +1.612.822.8667
Mpls, MN 55408 USA E: clift@publicus.net
Consulting and Home Page - http://www.publicus.net
Democracies Online - http://www.e-democracy.org/do
Read my new article "Democracy is Online" from link.
-------------------------------------------------------
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 02:55:50 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA23566; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:38:54 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA23556 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:38:51 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from out1.ibm.net (out1.ibm.net [165.87.194.252]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA25547 for ; Sat, 25 Jul 1998 19:14:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from slip129-37-51-83.ca.us.ibm.net (slip129-37-51-83.ca.us.ibm.net [129.37.51.83]) by out1.ibm.net (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id CAA24362 for ; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 02:19:21 GMT
Message-ID: <35BA93BC.AD1@Qmail.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 19:26:04 -0700
From: Thompson
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.04 (Win16; I)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Helpful Feedback for Newbies Who Err?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
- -------------- Quoting Chuq ----------- -
> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 21:36:32 -0700
> From: Chuq Von Rospach
> Subject: Re: Some thoughts on user validation....
>
> 7/23/98 [Mike]---
>> They don't know how to use an editor, so they send 2 or 3 line posts
>> followed by the ENTIRE message they're responding to, and sometime
>> the entire message that THAT one responded to, etc.
>>
>> We get posts that contain redundant data in HTML format, posts with
>> Microsoft TNEF attachments on them, whatever the Bill Gates those are, etc.
[Chuq]---
> That's why I built front end filters on things. It traps this stuff,
> and sends back a useful message to the user that actually tries to
> explain the situation.
Wow, Chuq, would I like to see those messages! I wonder if
they may be useful as templates for others of us to consider?
Are they copyrighted? Steal-able? is there a way you could
possibly make them available? Post them on a web site somewhere...?
I'm a list maintainer, learning that I can't help zubscribers
whose email tools are completely unfamiliar to me. I would
love to have---and share with zubscribers---some helpful
information on how/where to turn off html or QP or iso or
whatever, in their email clients.
Folks who don't read manuals and are completely unfamiliar with
their own email tools, create key problems. And I can't help
them with that, if I too am clueless about their client. That
stymies me, time and again.
Hmm, not only would I like to offer helpful information, I'd
like to offer it in a way that doesn't reflect annoyance on
my part. That would be a bonus.
Thanks,
Thompson
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 03:05:27 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA24041; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:44:40 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA24033 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:44:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from strato-fe0.ultra.net (strato-fe0.ultra.net [146.115.8.190]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA23433 for ; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 19:41:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from voyager (d233.dial-5.cmb.ma.ultra.net [209.6.68.233]) by strato-fe0.ultra.net (8.8.8/ult.n14767) with SMTP id WAA24217; Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:47:02 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <2.2.32.19980731024749.01086a74@pop.ma.ultranet.com>
X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:47:49 -0400
To: "Ronald F. Guilmette"
From: Stan Ryckman
Subject: "probe failed" (was: Re: Unhelpful Bounce Of The Week)
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 04:25 PM 7/30/98 -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>Speaking of ``probes'', I have just been dealing with a problem on my end
>that is rather annoying and which seems to be due to some rather glaring
>stupidity on the part of those folks who developed the Listserv package.
>(Is that Lsoft, Inc.?)
Yup (and I'm not speaking for them, but I'm "owner" of a LISTSERV list).
[snip]
>The problem is that 9apparently) Listserv cane be told (by the list owner)
>to perform some sort of a ``probe'' on a given address which may be bad,
>and it will then go and try to do that.
It can also be told to do this routinely (at least recent versions).
>Now get this... if the probe FAILS... which is to say if the address is
>in fact bad... then it appears that Listserv then tries to send a ``probe
>failed'' message TO THE ADDRESS THAT JUST FAILED!
I think this give the subscriber's system one last chance to have recovered
from one of those "transient permanent" errors.
>No, I'm not making this up.
>
>That doesn't bother me so much as the WAY in which these idiotic ``probe
>failed'' messages are sent... They appear to be sent with a null/empty
>envelope return address, thus making them (in some ways related to spam
>filtering) indistinguishable from ordinary Mailer-Daemon bounces for mail
>which was sent *from* my system to someplace else.
>
>It seems to me that this is beyond moronic. Up till now I really believed
>that there were only two uses for null envelope return addresses, i.e. for
>sending back E-mail bounce messages and for spamming.
>
>If anybody wants to explain to me why my criticisms of Listserv are unfound-
>ed, I'm all ears.
Well, the null envelope return address just means that there is nobody
who cares if the message can be delivered; it can be silently trashed.
It is you who CHOSE to examine mail that said "discard if undeliverable."
Its use predates spamming by decades. True, the most COMMON use is to
avoid "bounce loops."
When LISTSERV probes, it needs the bounce so it can remove the subscriber,
so the probe itself has a non-null envelope return address. Once it has
removed the subscriber, there is nothing more LISTSERV can do unless
the subscriber rejoins by the normal process--so why tell the other system
to generate another bounce, and then discard the bounce? Waste of traffic
on both sides.
LISTSERV generates null envelope return addresses for other messages as well.
I believe an example of this may be a request to search an archive. If the
search results can't reach the requestor, LISTSERV can do nothing with
bounced search results.
Maybe you disagree with the probe process or the "probe failed" message
or the fact that it now happens to fall in your "mis-addressed spam" pile...
but it hardly seems deserving of the term "beyond moronic."
That's my opinion, anyway.
Cheers,
Stan
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 03:09:48 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA23624; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:39:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA23614 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 2 Aug 1998 23:39:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from lokkur.dexter.mi.us (lokkur.dexter.mi.us [148.59.2.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA09685 for ; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 19:14:29 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from scs@localhost)
by lokkur.dexter.mi.us (8.8.8/8.8.8/lokkur-1.1-scs) id WAA17972;
Sun, 26 Jul 1998 22:16:31 -0400 (EDT)
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Path: lokkur.dexter.mi.us!not-for-mail
From: scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons)
Newsgroups: local.list-managers
Subject: Unhelpful Bounce**2 Of The Week
Date: 26 Jul 1998 22:16:30 -0400
Organization: Inland Sea
Lines: 110
Distribution: local
Message-ID: <6pgntu$hhh$1@lokkur.dexter.mi.us>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Oh, this one was great. Someone sent mail to a list with a member
whose company receives mail via Compuserve MX. First there was the
bounce message. Not the worst ever seen, but far from the best.
I forwarded the bounce message to the postmaster (1st message below)
and got a startling response.
First, my message forwarding the bounce to postmaster@compuserve.com.
Note the recipients name was *not* in the To: or Cc fields; Compuserve
apparently created a plaintext bcc containing it. They also rewrote
the case in the fulltext name, and inserted a fairly amazing number
of %-directives into the .
=====================================================================
> The following bounce message has been occurring regularly for a person
> at Ryder systems. When it departs here, the To: field is
> dorsai@lokkur.dexter.mi.us and the envelope is for
> .
> By the time of the bounce, it seems to have been rewritten into the
> odd bcc format below.
>
> In any case, ``Server's name changed'' is not a very informative
> error message. If there's anything I can do on my end to rectify
> this, please let me know.
>
> Steve
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Mailer-Daemon@sxhad.compuserve.net -----
>
> Message-Id: <9807261730.AA1319@notesgw.compuserve.com>
> To: scs
> From: Mailer-Daemon@sxhad.compuserve.net
> Date: Sun, 26 Jul 98 13:30:18
> Subject: Returned mail
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: Multipart/Mixed; Boundary="-- message ----"
>
> ---- message ----
>
> Router: Unable to open mailbox file CSERVE-82/SERVER/CSERVE mail.box:
> Server's name changed
>
> ---- message ----
> Content-Type: Message/rfc822
> Content-Description: RFC822
>
> To: dorsai
> bcc: "name-removed-by-scs/rdl/rydersysteminc/us" /rydersysteminc/us%rydersysteminc%rydersysteminc%rydergate
> @notesgw.compuserve.com>
> From: cl29
> Date: 21 Jul 98 13:07:35
> Subject: beer
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: Text/Plain
>
> ---- message ------
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
Imagine my surpise when a few seconds later this missive arrived:
> Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 00:15:50 -0400
> Message-Id: <199807270415.AAA25003@postmaster.compuserve.com>
> To: scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us
> References: <19980726215333.A17452@lokkur.dexter.mi.us>
> In-Reply-To: <19980726215333.A17452@lokkur.dexter.mi.us>
> Precedence: addrb1
> X-Loop: postmaster@compuserve.com
> From: CompuServe Postmaster
> Subject: RE: Addressing Members
> Reply-To: pmaster@postmaster.compuserve.com
> Error-To: pmaster@postmaster.compuserve.com
> Status: RO
> Content-Length: 925
> Lines: 26
>
>
> All CompuServe addresses are either of the form 7xxxx,xxx or
> 1xxxxx,xxx. (where each "x" signifies a digit from 0 to 7).
> There can be from 2 to 4 digits following the comma.
>
> To send mail to such an address from the Internet, change the
> comma to a period and attach "@CompuServe.com" as is shown
> in the following examples:
>
> 74906.1610@CompuServe.com or 100906.1610@CompuServe.com
>
> All CompuServe alphanumeric addresses contain 2-32 characters.
> Valid characters are A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and "_" (underscore).
> There must be one alpha character, but not more than four of
> the same character consecutively. To send mail to such an
> address from the Internet, type the address and attach
> "@CompuServe.com" as is shown in the following example:
>
> ID_123@CompuServe.com
>
> Please contact postmaster@compuserve.com if you need additional
> formatting information for other types of addresses.
>
> Cordially,
>
> The Electronic Postmaster
Note the From address is exactly the address I sent to! My brief and
testy reply was sent to the reply-to, and it doesn't seem to have bounced.
Let's see if a human being responds . . .
--
"Where there's a will, there's a lawyer."
Kinky Friedman, `God Bless John Wayne'
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 03:23:24 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA27478; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 03:03:11 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from wubios.wustl.edu (wubios.wustl.edu [128.252.117.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA27471 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 03:03:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from phil@localhost)
by wubios.wustl.edu (8.9.0/8.9.0) id FAA28239;
Mon, 3 Aug 1998 05:09:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: "J. Philip Miller"
Message-Id: <199808031009.FAA28239@wubios.wustl.edu>
Subject: Re: "probe failed" (was: Re: Unhelpful Bounce Of The Week)
To: de5@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (Dave Sill)
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 05:09:36 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com
In-Reply-To: <19980731141020.2371.qmail@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> from "Dave Sill" at Jul 31, 98 10:10:19 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 PGP3 *ALPHA*]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> "Ronald F. Guilmette" wrote:
> >
> >Why does it make any sense to send yet another message to an address that
> >you already know and believe is dead?
>
> Because you don't know it's dead--you just know it's bouncing. I've
> seen several cases where bounced messages were *also* successfully
> delivered. If you don't send the user a message saying "Hey, your mail
> is bouncing", they may never realize it.
>
which is why the majordomo solution of placing "bouncing subscribers" onto a
special "bounces" (list which sends the message that the subscriber has been
removed for many days after they have been removed) work so well.
-phil
> -Dave
>
>
--
J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis MO 63110
phil@wubios.WUstl.edu - (314) 362-3617 [362-2693(FAX)]
http://www.biostat.wustl.edu/~phil
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 06:56:55 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA02854; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 06:13:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA02841 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 06:13:35 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from newmicronpc (slip-32-100-104-62.ct.us.ibm.net [32.100.104.62]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id HAA27488; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 07:20:01 -0600 (MDT)
From: "Tom Neff"
To:
Subject: Re: individualized probe messages
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 09:29:04 -0400
Message-ID: <000001bdbee2$af2b9fc0$3e686420@newmicronpc>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0
X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3
In-Reply-To: <199808030800.BAA25109@honor.greatcircle.com>
Importance: Normal
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
"David W. Tamkin" wrote:
> Background: I posted about a problem I had had to deal with without the
> facilities that many of you have at your disposal. Tom Neff then posted a
> follow-up that offered a solution I could not have used...
...
> | I should emphasize (if it's not already obvious) that the From: addresses,
> | machine and domain you use for the serialized probe need have nothing to do
> | with the machine or domain that the mailing list itself emanates from.
>
> Yes, the From: address and the From_ address can differ from the true send-
> ing point and from one another.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if the LIST you wish to probe
is hosted at BLACKIRONPRISON.COM and you have NO privileges there at all, it
doesn't matter, because you can conduct your probe from LITTLEBOX.CUTEPUPPY.EDU
or FRIEND.VANITY.COM or anywhere else you can either throw a real or virtual
server on the Net, or borrow the service from someone else who has one.
If other list-managers here use the serialized-From trick successfully, then one
could just post a query "Need to conduct an individualized probe - will trade
old Archie comix - private replies please" and someone could respond. You could
even offer the service for money, hint hint.
By the way, the suggestion was also made to use Unix "plus addressing", e.g.,
From: jsmith+12345@something.com - it's a great suggestion but after trying it
on three separate sites, I haven't gotten it to work. Has Sendmail 8.9 broken
this, perhaps?
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 13:26:29 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA03309; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 06:49:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA03302 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 06:48:54 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-4.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.74])
by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA19591;
Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:55:22 +0200
Received: (from norbert@localhost)
by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA00561;
Mon, 3 Aug 1998 16:35:10 +0200
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 16:35:10 +0200
Message-Id: <199808031435.QAA00561@quill>
From: Norbert Bollow
Prefer-Language: de, en, fr
To: RAF@CU.NIH.GOV
CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-reply-to: <199808011742.KAA24896@web.webcoach.com> (RAF@CU.NIH.GOV)
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I wrote:
> > So far, the only situation when an entity A can legally send something
> > with null return path to another entity B is when A needs to make some
> > kind of status report about an e-mail message (with non-null return
> > path) which was sent by B.
Roger Fajman replied:
> When RFC 821 was written, spam did not exist, so the
> issue wasn't considered.
You have a good point here. The issue should be considered and then
clarified. I will stop arguing about obscure implications of RFCs on
matters which were not considered when the original standard was
written.
> The mailing list for the working group is drums@cs.utk.edu. To be
> added, write to drums-request@cs.utk.edu.
Done.
> But the working group is trying to get both this document and the RFC
> 822 revision out the door, so it may well not want to consider this
> issue at this late date.
Actually IMHO the most logical place to clarify this matter would not be
the revision of RFC 821, but a revision of RFC 1123. Do you know whether
such a revision is planned or in progress?
-- NB.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 14:22:49 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA10609; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:44:23 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from beltway.cd.com (beltway.cd.com [204.217.30.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id NAA10601 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:43:46 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from bif.cd.com by beltway.cd.com (5.x/SMI-SVR4)
id AA14435; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:49:39 -0500
Received: by bif.cd.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
id PAA11797; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:46:35 -0500
From: richardm@cd.com (Richard Masoner)
Message-Id: <199808032046.PAA11797@bif.cd.com>
Subject: Re: individualized probe messages
To: tneff@panix.com (Tom Neff)
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:46:35 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: <000001bdbee2$af2b9fc0$3e686420@newmicronpc> from "Tom Neff" at Aug 3, 98 09:29:04 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> By the way, the suggestion was also made to use Unix "plus addressing", e.g.,
> From: jsmith+12345@something.com - it's a great suggestion but after trying it
> on three separate sites, I haven't gotten it to work. Has Sendmail 8.9 broken
> this, perhaps?
Works for me with systems running sendmail 8.7 and 8.8.8. It doesn't
work on the sendmail that comes with Solaris 2.6. I haven't tried it
with a system running sendmail 8.9.
sendmail that comes with various versions of IRIX also seem to break.
sendmail which ships with IRIX 6.5, for example, is based on 8.8.8
code.
Richard Masoner
Champaign Illinois USA
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 14:55:01 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA10114; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:07:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA10106 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 13:07:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id PAA16612 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:13:51 -0500 (CDT)
Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id PAA08481 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:13:51 -0500 (CDT)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Message-Id: <199808032013.PAA08481@Venus.mcs.net>
Subject: Re: individualized probe messages
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:13:50 -0500 (CDT)
In-Reply-To: <000001bdbee2$af2b9fc0$3e686420@newmicronpc> from "Tom Neff" at Aug 3, 98 09:29:04 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Tom Neff wrote,
| I'm saying that if the LIST you wish to probe is hosted at
| BLACKIRONPRISON.COM and you have NO privileges there at all, it doesn't
| matter, because you can conduct your probe from LITTLEBOX.CUTEPUPPY.EDU or
| FRIEND.VANITY.COM or anywhere else you can either throw a real or virtual
| server on the Net, or borrow the service from someone else who has one.
Yes ... as long as the site is under your control or whoever controls it lets
you. Thank you for clarifying; that is rather different from what I thought
you meant (which was also true).
| If other list-managers here use the serialized-From trick successfully,
| then one could just post a query "Need to conduct an individualized probe -
| will trade old Archie comix - private replies please" and someone could
| respond.
Of course; that is a good example of a way we can help one another out in
addition to answering one another's questions. I asked a bigger favor on
this very list this past spring and another member offered the service (which
I will need for the last time later this month).
| By the way, the suggestion was also made to use Unix "plus addressing",
| e.g., From: jsmith+12345@something.com - it's a great suggestion but after
| trying it on three separate sites, I haven't gotten it to work. Has
| Sendmail 8.9 broken this, perhaps?
Hmm. I'll try it from here. When my problem with a member who forwarded
to a bad Prodigy address occurred, I had no plus addressing available, but
I do now.
Results to follow.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 17:59:38 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA14807; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 17:48:30 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA14778 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 17:48:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id TAA27262 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:54:48 -0500 (CDT)
Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id TAA12150 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:54:48 -0500 (CDT)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Message-Id: <199808040054.TAA12150@Mars.mcs.net>
Subject: plus+addressing and probes
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:54:47 -0500 (CDT)
In-Reply-To: <000001bdbee2$af2b9fc0$3e686420@newmicronpc> from "Tom Neff" at Aug 3, 98 09:29:04 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Tom Neff wrote,
| By the way, the suggestion was also made to use Unix "plus addressing",
| e.g., From: jsmith+12345@something.com - it's a great suggestion but after
| trying it on three separate sites, I haven't gotten it to work. Has
| Sendmail 8.9 broken this, perhaps?
Hard to say ... I sent mail to an impossible address with the envelope sender
pointing to a plussed address for me on a machine running Sendmail 8.9.0 --
but it will deliver mail for me that I can read on servers in the domain, I
cannot log into the machine that runs 8.9.0 and honors plussing.
It was bounced to the full plussed address.
Then I tried sending mail to an impossible address on the 8.9.0 machine with
the envelope directed to a plussed address for me here, where the Sendmail
version appears to be 8.8.7. The plussing was honored for the bounce, but
the item was refused in consultation and never got into the 8.9.0 machine.
Perhaps someone who can log into a machine running 8.9.0 can throw more light
on the subject.
I'm assuming that the colon in Mr. Neff's "From:" is a typo and he was set-
ting the envelope sender to the plussed address, not just the RFC822 From:
field.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 20:17:10 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA15782; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 18:59:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from CU.NIH.GOV (cu.nih.gov [128.231.160.111]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id SAA15775 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 18:59:48 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199808040159.SAA15775@honor.greatcircle.com>
To: nb@thinkcoach.com
cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: "Roger Fajman"
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 22:04:00 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> Actually IMHO the most logical place to clarify this matter would not be
> the revision of RFC 821, but a revision of RFC 1123. Do you know whether
> such a revision is planned or in progress?
>
> -- NB.
None is in progress and I've not heard of any plans.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 3 23:17:05 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA18814; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 22:57:08 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [36.21.0.44]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id WAA18807 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 22:56:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 21544 invoked by uid 500); 4 Aug 1998 06:03:21 -0000
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: "probe failed" (was: Re: Unhelpful Bounce Of The Week)
References: <2.2.32.19980731024749.01086a74@pop.ma.ultranet.com>
From: Russ Allbery
In-Reply-To: Stan Ryckman's message of "Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:47:49 -0400"
Date: 03 Aug 1998 23:03:20 -0700
Message-ID:
Lines: 23
X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Stan Ryckman writes:
> Well, the null envelope return address just means that there is nobody
> who cares if the message can be delivered; it can be silently trashed.
> It is you who CHOSE to examine mail that said "discard if
> undeliverable." Its use predates spamming by decades. True, the most
> COMMON use is to avoid "bounce loops."
If that's the true intention of the null envelope, then that's a *very*
bad idea, as a null envelope doesn't actually mean anything of the sort.
If a message with a null envelope bounces, that's a double-bounce, which
can often indicate a more serious misconfiguration, and some MTAs will
deliver the resulting double-bounce to the local postmaster. I find that
feature valuable.
Using a null envelope sender is not equivalent to saying that if the
message can't be delivered it should be silently trashed. If that's the
intention, you should use as the envelope sender an address that silently
discards all mail sent to it. Most stock sendmail configurations come
with an alias "nobody" that does this.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 4 13:30:04 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA03082; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 13:23:32 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from www.kxan.com (kxan.com [207.207.6.50]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA03075 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 13:23:22 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from micah@localhost) by www.kxan.com (8.8.5/8.8.b5) id PAA08789; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 15:30:11 -0500 (CDT)
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 15:30:05 -0500 (CDT)
From: Micah Thompson
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Fastest List?
In-Reply-To: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Hello,
I just setup a majordomo list for a local weather Email Alert system, and
need some tips.
I need more speed! The list's objective is this: To get the alert out
to all the subscribers in record speed. Actual subscribers cannot post
to the list, so it's just a distribution list really.
Currently I am running majordomo with a custom perl program written for
me by a friend called "splitlist" but it's still too slow. (splitlist
takes the subscriber lists, alphabetizes by reverse domain, and spawns
off multiple parallel sendmail processes). It is way faster than
majordomo alone, but still not enough.
Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something
like listserv? Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily
loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic
being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler
radar). :)
If the weather warning expires at 3:30pm, and a subscriber doesn't
receive it until 4:30pm, they tend to get irrate. ;)
Thanks,
Micah Thompson
Computer System Manager
WebMaster
KXAN-TV 36, NBC Affiliate, http://www.kxan.com
KNVA-TV 54, WB Affiliate, http://www.knva.com
Austin, TX
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 4 17:59:29 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA06433; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 17:42:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA06425 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 17:42:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-2.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.72])
by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA29482;
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 02:49:24 +0200
Received: (from norbert@localhost)
by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id DAA00561;
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 03:47:39 +0200
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 03:47:39 +0200
Message-Id: <199808050147.DAA00561@quill>
From: Norbert Bollow
Prefer-Language: de, en, fr
To: Detailed Revision/Update of Message Standards
Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Clarification request: limits on use of null reverse-path
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Greetings,
In the replacement for RFC821 I would like to see the issue clarified
of when it is appropriate to use a null reverse-path. As I understand
RFC821 and also draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-07, the intended meaning is that
a null reverse-path should only be used in certain circumstances, namely
when an entity A has sent an e-mail message to B, then B may use a null
reverse-path when sending a notification about this message back to A.
What I would like to see clarified is that it is not appropriate to use
a null reverse-path merely because the sender does not want to be
bothered with non-delivery notifications.
Norbert Bollow (Zuerich, Switzerland)
suggested additions to draft-ietf-drums-smtpupd-07
==================================================
Add the following at the end of the second paragraph in section 4.1.1.2:
: ... However, a null reverse-path SHOULD NOT be used merely because the
: sender does not want to be bothered with non-delivery notifications. See
: section ##6.4 for a discussion of when a null reverse-path is appropriate
: and when it is not.
Add the following after section 6.3:
: 6.4 The importance of the null reverse-path for debugging mail problems
:
: There are several types of notification messages which are required by
: the relevant standards to be sent with a null reverse path, namely
: non-delivery notifications as discussed in section ##3.7, other kinds
: of Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs, see [RFC 1894]) and also
: Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs, see [RFC 2298]). All of these
: kinds of messages are notification about a previous message, and they
: are sent to the reverse-path of the previous mail message. If the
: delivery of such a notification message fails, that usually indicates
: a problem with the mail system of the host to which the notification
: message is addressed. For this reason, at many hosts the MTA is set up
: to forward such failed notification messages to someone who is able to
: fix problems with the mail system, e.g. via the postmaster alias. This
: is a valuable tool for debugging mail problems.
:
: For messages where the recipient address has been obtained from any
: source other than the reverse-path of a previous message, a null
: reverse path SHOULD NOT be used, so that the mail administrator of the
: destination host will not be needlessly alerted if the message is
: undeliverable.
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 05:51:38 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA16112; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 05:36:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from MAINE.maine.edu (maine.maine.edu [130.111.39.100]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id FAA16105 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 05:36:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from polaris.umpi.maine.edu [130.111.208.87] by MAINE.maine.edu (IBM VM SMTP Level 310) via TCP with SMTP ; Wed, 05 Aug 1998 08:41:56 EDT
Received: from POLARIS/MERCURYQUEUE by polaris.umpi.maine.edu (Mercury 1.21);
5 Aug 98 08:43:04 EST
Received: from MERCURYQUEUE by POLARIS (Mercury 1.21); 5 Aug 98 08:42:55 EST
From: "Anthony J. Albert"
Organization: University of Maine at PI
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 08:42:49 EST
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Re: Fastest List?
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (v2.42a)
Message-ID: <3F5678287D@polaris.umpi.maine.edu>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On 5 Aug 98 at 1:00, List-Managers-Digest wrote:
>Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 15:30:05 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Micah Thompson
>Subject: Fastest List?
>
>Hello,
>
>I just setup a majordomo list for a local weather Email Alert system, and
>need some tips.
>
>I need more speed! The list's objective is this: To get the alert out
>to all the subscribers in record speed. Actual subscribers cannot post
>to the list, so it's just a distribution list really.
>If the weather warning expires at 3:30pm, and a subscriber doesn't
>receive it until 4:30pm, they tend to get irrate. ;)
>
Well, one possible speed improvement would be to take Majordomo out of
the loop entirely. Just set up an account on the machine which has the
sole purpose of running a job every five or ten minutes, which can then
distribute the mail in its inbox, if there is any. Admittedly, this is
the next nearest thing to re-writing Majordomo, so that may not be the way
to go. Also, you would lose the ability for people to subscribe
themselves to the list, most likely, so, on second thought, this may
really _not_ be the way to go.
The real strategy here is to first determine what the bottleneck is. It
could be one of a number of things: network connection(s), the load the
machine is carrying for other tasks, or the time it takes to process the
mailing lists via the perl script you mentioned.
If possible, I would suggest having the perl script modified slightly so
that when the next alert went out, it put the time-stamp for each message
into a file. Then you could examine the file to see how long after the
alert was first sent to majordomo it took for the mail to start to be
distributed.
The next thing to do would be to examine the logs for the httpd program.
See if you can get information about how many hits it is getting during
the time that the weather warning is being emailled. If it's getting lots
of hits during the email distribution time, then you might begin to
think about getting another machine to handle the email.
If the machine is getting few or some hits during the email
distribution, it might be a network limitation, and you might investigate
to see where the limiting factor in network bandwidth is.
Hope this helps,
Anthony J. Albert
==============================================================
Anthony J. Albert albert@polaris.umpi.maine.edu
Systems and Software Support Specialist Postmaster
Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle
"The World Wide Web is just like its namesake, the spider's web -
full of dirt and bugs!"
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 06:36:44 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA16510; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 06:25:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA16490 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 06:25:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-7.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.77])
by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA32487;
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 15:31:44 +0200
Received: (from norbert@localhost)
by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA00735;
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:09:40 +0200
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:09:40 +0200
Message-Id: <199808051409.QAA00735@quill>
From: Norbert Bollow
Prefer-Language: de, en, fr
To: drums@cs.utk.edu, list-managers@greatcircle.com
In-reply-to:
(message from Philip Hazel on Wed, 5 Aug 1998 10:04:19 +0100 (BST))
Subject: Re: Clarification request: limits on use of null reverse-path
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I wrote:
> What I would like to see clarified is that it is not appropriate to use
> a null reverse-path merely because the sender does not want to be
> bothered with non-delivery notifications.
Philip Hazel replied:
> That would leave no simple mechanism for a sender to achieve that
> effect.
I am not convinced that there are any situations where this effect is
really appropriate except when sending some kind of notification to the
return path of a previously-received message.
However _if_ you really want to send a message so that you won't see any
notifications about it (and I'm assuming that you have a legitimate
reason for this, i.e. you're not a spammer), you can always set your
envelope sender to a 'nobody' alias at the originating host which
forwards to /dev/null or the equivalent.
> (DSN is not simple, nor widely deployed.) The increasing use of
> autoresponders means that is it important to have such a mechanism, as
> otherwise the chance of autoresponder<=>autoresponder loops is
> increased.
If you're talking about an autoresponder which sends its response to the
envelope sender of the incoming message, the text which I'm proposing
does not forbid the autoresponder to use a null return path. (The
"SHOULD NOT" in the proposed addition to section 4.1.1.2 does not apply
because in this case the intention is to prevent loops and not just that
someone does not want to be bothered. The "SHOULD NOT" in the proposed
new section 6.4 does not apply either.
If you're talking about an autoresponder which sends its response to the
header From: address of the incoming message, then the appropriate
action will _not_ be to use a null reverse path, but to use a non-null
reverse-path that is a valid e-mail address at the host with the
autoresponder, but which is guaranteed not to lead to such an
autoresponder, e.g. something like .
In my opinion the appropriate way to handle mail to this address would
be a little perl script which checks incoming messages with null return
path if there is a large number of such notifications from the same host
(in which case postmaster would be alerted about the potential problem)
and discards notifications otherwise, while messages with non-null
return path would be forwarded to a human who is responsible for the
autoresponder. However if you do not agree with this opinion and you
prefer to handle all mail manually,
or discard it all unread, there is nothing in my proposed text which
would forbid either of those two options.
Note that from the perspective of debugging obscure problems, an
e-mail robot which sends messages with a reverse path like
is better than one which uses a null
reverse path not only because the reverse
path helps avoiding unneccessary double bounces, but also because
the reverse path helps with distinguishing between maillog entries
from bounces and those from messages sent by an e-mail robot. The only
reason why I have not included this point in my proposed text is that
I don't think that a reverse path (which
forwards to /dev/null and nowhere else) will ever be really
appropriate.
Loops between various e-mail rebots (not only autoresponders) should be
fought with methods that do not make it impossible for the e-mail robot
to look at bounces of messages which they send.
It is true that the methods which are currently employed for preventing
loops between various e-mail rebots are somewhat ad-hoc and unsatisfying.
They could be greatly improved by a new, standardized Robots: header
which would specify what kind of action an e-mail robot should take
if the message is processed by one. The possible actions could be
"discard", "bounce" or "process", with a default of "process" if the
header is not there.
> > : For messages where the recipient address has been obtained from any
> > : source other than the reverse-path of a previous message, a null
> > : reverse path SHOULD NOT be used, so that the mail administrator of the
> > : destination host will not be needlessly alerted if the message is
> > : undeliverable.
>
> In many cases it is the mail administrator of the sending host who would
> be alerted,
True. I will need to revise my proposed text a little. If there is a
rough consensus in the DRUMS working group to include something similar
in meaning to the "SHOULD NOT" which I'm proposing, I will be willing to
work a little more on the explanatory text, at least to correct the
minor error which you pointed out. (I currently feel that trying to
discuss e-mail robots, or spam, automated bounce-handling in any detail
would be outside of the intended scope of the document, though.)
> but it does depend on the way the destination's MTA is
> configured.
Yes.
> When the volume of mail on any system gets at all
> substantial, mail administrators tend simply to ignore undeliverable
> messages whose senders are "<>". 99% of those I see are the result of
> spam.
However if you take precautions not to expose most of the email
addresses of your network on the Web or Usenet or in unprotected mailing
list archives (i.e. those places where spammers go to harvest e-mail
adresses) and you make sure that the addresses which you need to expose
will never become invalid, you will not have this problem. (Of course
another, and probably much more important, benefit of such a policy is
that you can then install a spam filter on those addresses which you
expose).
-- NB.
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 07:20:54 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA16791; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 06:58:21 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from beltway.cd.com (beltway.cd.com [204.217.30.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA16784 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 06:58:14 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from bif.cd.com by beltway.cd.com (5.x/SMI-SVR4)
id AA12343; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 09:04:36 -0500
Received: by bif.cd.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
id JAA08467; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 09:01:36 -0500
From: richardm@cd.com (Richard Masoner)
Message-Id: <199808051401.JAA08467@bif.cd.com>
Subject: Re: Fastest List?
To: micah@kxan.com (Micah Thompson)
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 09:01:36 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: from "Micah Thompson" at Aug 4, 98 03:30:05 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Micah Thompson asked about ways to speed up distribution of his wx alert list:
> Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something
> like listserv? Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily
> loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic
> being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler
> radar). :)
The list-admin FAQ at
ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/mail/list-admin/software-faq
appears to answer your question. Here's an excerpt from the relevant
section:
---------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: 2.05 Performance and system-load issues related to mail deliver
The main issue in distributing to large lists is, how quickly can you get the
mail out? Most MLM's leave routing and optimization decisions up to the MTA
(Mail Transport Agent, usually Sendmail under Unix), but some other systems
-- notably ListProc, LISTSERV, and SmartList -- take a more active approach
in managing network load. To illustrate, let's look at the path mail takes
to delivery in each of these four systems.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Your technique of organizing recipients by domain and starting multiple
sendmail processes is similar to what Listproc and SmartList (part of
procmail) do.
I've used Listproc, majordomo, and procmail; I'm not all that familiar
with Listserv other than being on some lists served by Listserv.
You'll want to read the FAQ for details, but from what I understand all
Listserv servers cooperate with one another and list mail is
distributed to other listserv servers for further distribution (if my
explanation is messed up somebody please correct me).
A few things to consider:
1) Use exploders. For example, if you have several subscribers at
foo.com, send one message to an alias at foo.com, and let the MTA there
handle distribution to multiple users @ foo.com. This requires the
cooperation of the admin at foo.com, of course.
2) sendmail isn't exactly the quickest MTA in the world. Look at some
of the alternative MTAs.
3) The time it takes to deliver a message is affected by factors other
than the time it takes to leave your system. Your network connectivity
can be a BIG factor if you have a large list, especially if you have a
popular web server. I'm on the the tornado warning list hosted at the
University of Illinois. It typically takes three or four minutes for a
notice to get to me once it has left the UofI then through Chicago,
mae-west, PSI.NET, and finally to my desktop.
4) Check your network connectivity with your upstream, ALTER.NET. I
hear UUNET does things like sell you a T1, then overload it by sticking
three other customers on the same T1. The small print will let you
know what kind of bandwidth you have. IANAL and other disclaimers
apply.
5) Does Austin have some sort of local NAP, and does your provider
participate in it? That can also help in distribution to local
customers.
> If the weather warning expires at 3:30pm, and a subscriber doesn't
> receive it until 4:30pm, they tend to get irrate. ;)
If they require some sort of real-time notification, well, they need to
understand that email is not a reliable method of notification.
Richard Masoner
Champaign Illinois USA
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 08:17:03 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA17831; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 08:03:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA17821 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 08:03:16 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-0.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.70])
by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA21480;
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 17:09:55 +0200
Received: (from norbert@localhost)
by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA00892;
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 18:00:41 +0200
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 18:00:41 +0200
Message-Id: <199808051600.SAA00892@quill>
From: Norbert Bollow
Prefer-Language: de, en, fr
To: ph10@cus.cam.ac.uk
Cc: drums@cs.utk.edu, list-managers@greatcircle.com
In-reply-to:
(message from Philip Hazel on Wed, 5 Aug 1998 14:53:46 +0100 (BST))
Subject: Re: Clarification request: limits on use of null reverse-path
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I wrote:
> > However if you take precautions not to expose most of the email
> > addresses of your network on the Web or Usenet or in unprotected mailing
> > list archives (i.e. those places where spammers go to harvest e-mail
> > adresses) and you make sure that the addresses which you need to expose
> > will never become invalid, you will not have this problem.
Philip Hazel replied
> I am sorry, but that is totally unrealistic.
>
> We are a University of over 20,000 people. There is no way we can stop
> our users exposing their email addresses to the world. Several thousand
I'm sorry that the words I used may indeed be read as sounding a little
arrogant, or even insulting. I assure you that they were not meant like
that!
In fact I did not intend to claim that this scenario would be realistic
for everyone or for you in particular. However there are situations (in
more corporate environments) where it is possible to do this.
The point which I wanted to make is that since in some situations it is
possible to control the effects of spam (so that spam does not cause you
to be flooded with masses of pointless double bounces) it makes sense to
include a statement in the RFC which will prevent software packages from
causing pointless double bounces.
-- NB
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 11:46:55 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA20968; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 11:36:40 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cli.computerlogic.com (cli.computerlogic.com [204.216.123.193]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA20961 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 11:36:29 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from jporter2.computerlogic.com (jporter2.computerlogic.com [204.216.123.126]) by cli.computerlogic.com (8.8.5/SCO5) with SMTP id OAA03501 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 14:43:58 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199808051843.OAA03501@cli.computerlogic.com>
X-Sender: jporter@pop.computerlogic.com
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Demo
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 14:38:02 -0400
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: "Jimmy D. Porter"
Subject: Re: Fastest List?
In-Reply-To:
References: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 03:30 PM 8/4/98 -0500, Micah Thompson wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I just setup a majordomo list for a local weather Email Alert system, and
>need some tips.
>
>I need more speed! The list's objective is this: To get the alert out
>to all the subscribers in record speed. Actual subscribers cannot post
>to the list, so it's just a distribution list really.
In your list-name.config file there should be a line:
# Put a precedence header with value into the outgoing
# message.
precedence = bulk
I am not sure what the other options are but you may could try Priority or
just comment the line out. This should/may cause the messages to spend
less time in the queue.
- ----------------------------------------------------------
- Jimmy Porter
-
- Internet Information Services Div. of: ComputerLogic, Inc.
- jporter@computerlogic.com http://www.computerlogic.com
- 912-474-5593 Ext 370
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 12:45:58 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA21581; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 12:29:42 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from monkman.org (cpu1787.adsl.bellglobal.com [206.47.37.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA21574 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 12:29:34 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from george ([192.168.66.27])
by monkman.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id PAA15618
for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 15:28:36 -0400 (EDT)
(envelope-from brian@monkman.org)
Message-Id: <199808051928.PAA15618@monkman.org>
From: "Brian Monkman"
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 15:36:47 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Subject: Re: Fastest List?
Reply-to: brian@monkman.org
In-reply-to: <3F5678287D@polaris.umpi.maine.edu>
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b)
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
One possible bottle neck is the receiving mail relay. If you are
running sendmail I think it spawns a single process to deliver a
message regardless of the number of recipients.
I have had the same sort of problem you are experiencing and while
my mail is not as time critical as yours I wanted to figure out a
workaround.
What I did is send out a few test e-mails and ran a tail -f on the
maillog file. By doing that I could tell what mail servers were
delaying things. Doing it a number of times over the course of a few
days eliminated - to some degree - temporary problems. What I
then did was edit the list file and moved the offending e-mail
addresses to the bottom of the file and I contacted the admins of
the mail server. I know this isn't very technical but it did work for
me. Probably not too helpful for a high volume, large subscriber list.
Brian
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 17:31:00 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA24604; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:13:19 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA24596 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:13:14 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA04450 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 07:50:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 29140 invoked by uid 500); 3 Aug 1998 14:57:08 -0000
Message-ID: <19980803105708.I12173@blank.org>
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 10:57:08 -0400
From: "Nathan J. Mehl"
To: Norbert Bollow , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM,
Eric Thomas
Subject: Re: Listserv's violation of RFC821
References: <18600.901841159@monkeys.com> <199807311728.TAA00282@quill>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91
In-Reply-To: <199807311728.TAA00282@quill>; from Norbert Bollow on Fri, Jul 31, 1998 at 07:28:36PM +0200
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
In the immortal words of Norbert Bollow (nb@thinkcoach.com):
>
> I am surprised to see you leave the list-managers list in reaction
> to Ron's criticism.
He would hardly be the first to leave a list because rfg's presence
rendered the signal-to-noise ratio untenable.
List-managers would probably not be the first list it happened to, either.
-n, who foolishly thought it was safe to come back after the _last_
rfg-centered pissfest.
------------------------------------------------------------
"Cyberterrorists may be difficult to capture in the act, but from what I know
about people who are highly skilled with computers, they should be easy to
beat up." (--The Onion)
------------------------------------------------
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 17:45:52 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA24554; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:12:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA24544 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:12:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Thinkage.On.CA (thinkage.thinkage.on.ca [192.102.11.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA00285 for ; Mon, 3 Aug 1998 03:57:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from thinkage.on.ca (ppp1.thinkage.on.ca [192.102.11.31])
by Thinkage.On.CA (8.9.1/Thinkage980518-8.9.0)
with ESMTP id HAA15265;
Mon, 3 Aug 1998 07:03:17 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <35C598D7.64405974@thinkage.on.ca>
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 1998 07:02:47 -0400
From: Ken
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (WinNT; U)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Grant Neufeld
CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: The List- headers are now an RFC
References:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Grant Neufeld wrote:
>
> This is a request for you to implement support for the List- header
> fields defined in RFC2369. This will make mail list access easier for
> your users.
> List-Subscribe: Body=subscribe%20list-managers>
i do subs/unsubs manually. and intend on keep doing so for
my own reasons.
how do i set the above header to say i require the following:
your email address (because i dont believe headers work
reliably enough)
your human name (ie: firstname lastname, whatever)
your contact phone number, including area/country codes and
best time of day(including timezone info)
also, i dont see the point of subscribe info, if the person is
already a subscriber (by virtue of getting messages from me)
oh okay, the rfc sez the user may want to resubscribe using an
old copy of a message.... however on my list going away for
temporary absences is done by requesting 'vacation status' not
unsubscribing. for unsubscribing loses their posting-quota seniority.
bring up the obvious thought: since i cant specify my unique
"on vacation/suspend me for a while" ability in the headers,
then placing a unsub header would encourage folks to
use the *wrong behavior* for my lists... hmmmmmm...
> List-Unsubscribe: Body=unsubscribe%20list-managers>
how do i set the above to require the users unique PIN.
--> ie: in general how do i tell those alleged automated conveniences
i want information *specific to the user* rather
than static string text? perhaps a generic prompt-get-answer syntax.
oh well, i am the minority who doesnt use the prepackaged 'style'
of list management. but i do wonder if others require user-specific
info during regular admin functions... or *will* they be doing so
as the future unfolds. many concepts i've implemented over the
years got 'invented' by majordomo,etc 9 months later. quite often.
-ken
ps: no, my software is not packaged for public consumption.
perhaps i should be evil and do so... thus making me less
a minority :)
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 18:01:21 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA24816; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:15:14 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id QAA24784 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:14:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mail.gcnet.com (mail.gcnet.com [206.252.184.11]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA29578 for ; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 08:35:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from pop.gcnet.com (pop.gcnet.com [206.252.184.10])
by mail.gcnet.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id KAA23479;
Tue, 4 Aug 1998 10:42:18 -0500
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 10:42:18 -0500 (CDT)
From: Chris Owen
To: Tasos Kotsikonas
cc: sales@emailsol.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Your Company's Press Releases (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <35C712B0.F4DCE4BE@emailsol.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Tasos Kotsikonas wrote:
> Chris Owen wrote:
>
> > Are you related to this? We just blackholed the address and the
> > enewsworks.net domain, but I'd hate to lose the listproc mailing list
> > because banning the emailsol.com domain.
>
> Chris, this was a legitimate letter from our president.
You've got to be kidding (I hope). You are condoning this blatent (and
really, really indiscriminate, since half the addresses it was sent to
don't even exist) spam? As a mailing list company you should be
particularly sensitive to crap like this. This address was roboted off a
web site and clearly was not solicited in any way.
I love listproc (and have gone against the tide in not replacing it),
love your work, and looked forward to the new product. However, if this
is the type of company that is going to be releasing it, we definitely
won't want to work with it.
Chris
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:37:17 -0400
> > From: EWorks
> > Reply-To: sales@emailsol.com
> > To: sales@lists.hubris.net
> > Cc: webmaster@lists.hubris.net, newsletter@lists.hubris.net,
> > marketing@lists.hubris.net
> > Subject: Your Company's Press Releases
> >
> > Hi;
> >
> > I just visited your web site and saw that you have your press releases
> > on line. My company is about to release a software product that can
> > automate your process of disseminating press releases and would
> > dramatically enhance your customer relations.
> >
> > If you feel that your press release process is a critical function and
> > potent marketing activity of your company then you will probably share
> > these passions with other professionals in our field:
> >
> > o You don't want to depend on anyone to update your web site when
> > an important press release needs to go out.
> >
> > o You have felt the pain of managing a growing list of editors and
> > interested parties you want to distribute press releases to.
> >
> > o You realize that there will be times when your press release
> > process is going to be under pressure to function rapidly and
> > reliably.
> >
> > o You realize that if there were a way to efficiently manage the
> > list of interested parties, that you could use your press
> > releases as a vehicle to improve your customer and investor
> > relations.
> >
> > o You are ready to aggressively deploy new internet technology to
> > give you a competitive edge in your customer and investor
> > relations.
> >
> > My company's new product, ENewsWorks, is a combination Web Server and
> > Email List Management Program which can give your company the most
> > advanced Press Release distribution capability in the world. Whenever
> > your press release is ready, you simply submit it to ENewsWorks.
> > ENewsWorks will then take that document and email out copies of it to
> > everyone who is on the email distribution list. At the same time
> > ENewsWorks will install that document into your Web site archive of
> > press releases that it maintains and automatically update the index to
> > those archives.
> >
> > What is revolutionary about ENewsWorks is the automated process that
> > it embodies for distributing your press releases. You do not have to
> > manage who gets your press releases because your interested editors,
> > investors and customers can subscribe and unsubscribe themselves, and
> > when each press release goes out it can automatically reach tens of
> > thousands of people directly and simultaneously. You can use your
> > press release process to build customer and investor loyalty. What is
> > revolutionary about ENewsWorks is that it embodies both "Push" and
> > "Pull" internet technology in one complete solution. On a individual
> > basis, your investors and customers can opt to have you "Push" press
> > releases to them by email, or "Pull" the information themselves by
> > visiting your automatically updated, indexed and searchable web site
> > archives.
> >
> > My vision is that ENewsWorks is the first of a new type of Internet
> > application that will transform the very nature and function of Press
> > Releases. Press Releases are poised to evolve from announcements made
> > to broadcast media organizations into a direct communication between
> > corporations and interested individuals (who will include
> > representatives of the mass media). The internet and the systems
> > embodied in ENewsWorks are the enabling technologies for this change.
> >
> > ENewsWorks Web Server Features:
> >
> > o Optional password protection allows you to control access to the
> > Web Archives of past press releases.
> >
> > o Built-in search functionality allows your Web visitors to search
> > your archive of press releases for phrases or keywords.
> >
> > o An index of Press Releases is automatically generated. Optional
> > additional hierarchy into the Press Releases archive can be
> > generated by time period of your choice: yearly, quarterly,
> > monthly, etc.
> >
> > o Subscribers to your Press Release list can view and modify their
> > preferences for how they receive your press releases.
> >
> > o The web site look and feel can be easily modified to match your
> > corporate web site with selectable text color, text background,
> > background image, your company logo image and your company
> > banner image.
> >
> > ENewsWorks Email Features:
> >
> > o Your customers, editors and investors can specify how they want
> > to receive your press releases. They can receive HTML or plain
> > text versions by email, they can receive email notification with
> > links only, or if you are generating a high volume of press
> > releases, they can opt for compiled digests to be sent to them
> > at regular intervals.
> >
> > o You can configure the email distribution list to be public or
> > closed.
> >
> > o Public distribution lists can be subscribed, unsubscribed and
> > configured by the public over your web site. You no longer need
> > to manage the list of who gets your press releases, and because
> > of this you can open it up to anyone who is interested, which
> > will include important investors and customers. We have built
> > in a process that assures that individuals can only subscribe
> > and unsubscribe themselves: When a person subscribes to receive
> > your press releases over the Web, they are automatically sent a
> > confirmation to their email address which they have to respond
> > to before their subscription goes into effect.
> >
> > o Closed Distribution lists can only be modified only by the
> > people you designate to have Subscription Manager Privileges.
> > Subscribers to these lists will not only get their press
> > releases emailed to them, but they will also have password
> > protected access to the archives over the Internet.
> >
> > You can read about the specifications of ENewsWorks, subscribe to our
> > company press releases, subscribe to our company newsletter, or try
> > out a running version of ENewsWorks by visiting our web site at:
> > http://www.enewsworks.net
> >
> > You can email us at: sales@enewsworks.net.
> > or call us at: (617) 868-9770
> >
> > If you're interested in joining a community of industry professionals
> > in your field, come join The Press Release Discussion List being
> > hosted on our site at http://www.enewsworks.net. We also host the
> > Corporate Newsletter Discussion List.
> >
> > I hope we can be of service to you.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Robert Anue
> > President,
> > Email Solutions Inc.
>
>
>
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Owen ~ Lottery: A stupidity tax
PO Box 1985 ~ owenc@gcnet.com
Garden City, KS 67846 ~ http://www.gardencity.net/~owenc/
Voice: (316) 275-1900 ~ ftp://ftp.gardencity.net/pub/owenc/
Fax: (316) 275-0313 ~ 88 FA CF C6 65 23 63 C1 6E 80 AE 0B 51 C0 22 36
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 5 21:02:49 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA28352; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 20:42:24 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from koobera.math.uic.edu (koobera.math.uic.edu [131.193.178.247]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id UAA28345 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 20:42:10 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 27571 invoked by uid 666); 6 Aug 1998 03:49:32 -0000
Date: 6 Aug 1998 03:49:32 -0000
Message-ID: <19980806034932.27569.qmail@cr.yp.to>
Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: "D. J. Bernstein"
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: The List- headers are now an RFC
References: <35C598D7.64405974@thinkage.on.ca>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Ken writes:
> ie: in general how do i tell those alleged automated conveniences
> i want information *specific to the user*
Put the List-* fields into that user's confirmation message.
It's up to the MUA to remember the latest List-* instructions for each
mailing list.
---Dan
Binary qmail distributions are allowed! http://pobox.com/~djb/qmail/dist.html
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 10 15:12:06 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA18736; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:10:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA18723 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:09:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from www.kimminau.org (dosgod.mi.org [207.158.154.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA04190 for ; Sun, 9 Aug 1998 18:24:03 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from kimminau.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by www.kimminau.org (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id VAA01499 for ; Sun, 9 Aug 1998 21:31:47 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID: <35CE4D83.26281BC9@kimminau.org>
Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 21:31:47 -0400
From: Eric Kimminau
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05C-SGI [en] (X11; I; IRIX 6.5 IP32)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Subject: Majordomo Log file reporting?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Howdy!
Has anyone out there written a Majordomo Logfile statistical analyzer?
Something that generates reports by member, message sizes and number,
etc?
Ive been searching for something like this but my only pointer so far
was to LogAnalyzer1.0 on a website in Finland but it was something
available for download.
Thanks in advance!
Eric.
--
=========================================================================
Eric Kimminau eric@kimminau.org "I speak my mind and no one
else's."
"I am the downhill tumble and roll champ, king of the toad finders,
captain of the high altitude tree branch vista club, second place
finisher in the round the yard backward dash, premier burper state
division, sodbuster and worm scout first order, and generalissimo
of the mud and mayhem society."
Calvin, 1995
Baroque (adj.): when you run out of Monet.
In dog years, Im dead.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 10 15:26:36 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA18677; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:09:34 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA18667 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:09:31 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA21444 for ; Sat, 8 Aug 1998 18:18:11 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id UAA12390; Sat, 8 Aug 1998 20:25:48 -0500 (CDT)
Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id UAA17939; Sat, 8 Aug 1998 20:25:47 -0500 (CDT)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Message-Id: <199808090125.UAA17939@Mercury.mcs.net>
Subject: Re: The List- headers are now an RFC
To: ken@Thinkage.On.CA (Ken)
Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 20:25:47 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com
In-Reply-To: <35C598D7.64405974@thinkage.on.ca> from "Ken" at Aug 3, 98 07:02:47 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Ken asked,
| Grant Neufeld wrote:
| > List-Subscribe: Body=subscribe%20list-managers>
|
| i do subs/unsubs manually. and intend on keep doing so for
| my own reasons.
|
| how do i set the above header to say i require the following:
| your email address (because i dont believe headers work
| reliably enough)
| your human name (ie: firstname lastname, whatever)
| your contact phone number, including area/country codes and
| best time of day(including timezone info)
My best suggestion, since one may put comments into parentheses:
List-Subscribe:
(instructions will be sent back to you)
List-Unsubscribe:
(instructions will be sent back to you)
If you do not require such details in a signoff request, then
List-Unsubscribe:
which, by the way, has been working out fine for my own list, where likewise
by choice I maintain the membership rolls manually.
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 10 15:41:42 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA18508; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:07:28 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA18498 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:07:25 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA09712 for ; Thu, 6 Aug 1998 07:19:13 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 24202 invoked by uid 500); 6 Aug 1998 14:26:23 -0000
Message-ID: <19980806102623.F12173@blank.org>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 10:26:23 -0400
From: "Nathan J. Mehl"
To: "Jimmy D. Porter" ,
List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Fastest List?
References: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette> <199808051843.OAA03501@cli.computerlogic.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91
In-Reply-To: <199808051843.OAA03501@cli.computerlogic.com>; from Jimmy D. Porter on Wed, Aug 05, 1998 at 02:38:02PM -0400
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
In the immortal words of Jimmy D. Porter (jporter@computerlogic.com):
>
> In your list-name.config file there should be a line:
> # Put a precedence header with value into the outgoing
> # message.
> precedence = bulk
>
> I am not sure what the other options are but you may could try Priority or
> just comment the line out. This should/may cause the messages to spend
> less time in the queue.
No, no, no!
This is an actively antisocial approach. Remote MTAs and MUAs also
will do filtering based on Precedence headers. This is like saying
"If you rewire everybody else's speedometer, your commute to work will
go faster."
If you want to speed up queue processing, just about every MTA in
the world (certainly including sendmail and qmail) will allow you
to locally tune the queue parameters locally.
-n
------------------------------------------------------
"Television is going to change the world; it's got everything you need:
sight, sound, motion and stupid white men." (--Nolanda Hill)
------------------------------------------
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 10 15:56:35 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA18336; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:05:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA18307 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:05:35 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA17036 for ; Wed, 5 Aug 1998 07:15:01 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 5210 invoked by uid 500); 5 Aug 1998 14:21:59 -0000
Message-ID: <19980805102159.W12173@blank.org>
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 10:21:59 -0400
From: "Nathan J. Mehl"
To: Micah Thompson , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Fastest List?
References: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91
In-Reply-To: ; from Micah Thompson on Tue, Aug 04, 1998 at 03:30:05PM -0500
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
In the immortal words of Micah Thompson (micah@kxan.com):
>
> I need more speed!
> Currently I am running majordomo with a custom perl program written for
> me by a friend called "splitlist" but it's still too slow. (splitlist
> takes the subscriber lists, alphabetizes by reverse domain, and spawns
> off multiple parallel sendmail processes). It is way faster than
> majordomo alone, but still not enough.
You probably want to look into the following:
1. bulk_mailer, a majordomo add-on that does some of the
same things as your script does, and a bit more.
2. qmail (www.qmail.org), vmailer (www.vmailer.org), or
another higher-performance MTA. (LSMTP may or may
not fit the bill; I've never used it, so cannot comment.)
3. Rob Kolstad of BSDI presented a paper on tuning high-
use mailing lists at the last USENIX LISA conference.
The paper may be available somewhere on www.usenix.org.
4. The majordomo-users@greatcircle.com mailing list. :)
> Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something
> like listserv?
As a rule, the MTA tends to be the speed limiting factor, not
the MLM. However, if your list is large enough, or you run
a great number of lists, Listserv might be a win for you on
other considerations. "Your Mileage May Vary."
> Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily
> loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic
> being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler
> radar). :)
Split your web machine from your mail machine. Really. Or at a minimum
make sure it's a multiprocessor machine and that the mail spools and
web directories live on different drives or better yet different
SCSI controllers. But really, split the functions into two different
machines. :)
-n
------------------------------------------------------------
Remember when they told you there'd be no future? Well, this is it.
------------------------------------------------
From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 13 12:42:12 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA23159; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 12:29:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA23152 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 12:29:52 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6])
by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA08036
for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 14:38:18 -0500
Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA00550 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 14:38:13 -0500
From: Mike Nolan
Message-Id: <199808131938.OAA00550@celery.tssi.com>
Subject: Duplicate messages from hotmail?
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 14:38:13 -0500 (CDT)
Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Is anyone else having problems with duplicate messages coming from
subscribers on hotmail? It seems to happen sporadically, and the
duplicates have different Message-ID headers so I can't filter them out that
way. It looks like hotmail is using qmail, I don't know if that is a factor.
--
Mike Nolan
From list-managers-owner Thu Aug 13 19:49:50 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA28275; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 19:38:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from commedia.cnds.jhu.edu (commedia.cnds.jhu.edu [128.220.231.250]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA28268 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 19:37:55 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from bigfish.cs.jhu.edu (root@bigfish.cs.jhu.edu [128.220.13.193])
by commedia.cnds.jhu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA27540
for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 22:46:24 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from dshaw@localhost)
by bigfish.cs.jhu.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) id WAA06900;
Thu, 13 Aug 1998 22:31:40 -0400
Message-ID: <19980813223137.31335@bigfish.cs.jhu.edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 22:31:37 -0400
From: David Shaw
To: List Managers
Subject: Re: Duplicate messages from hotmail?
References: <199808131938.OAA00550@celery.tssi.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88
In-Reply-To: <199808131938.OAA00550@celery.tssi.com>; from Mike Nolan on Thu, Aug 13, 1998 at 02:38:13PM -0500
Organization: Computer Science Department, The Johns Hopkins University
X-PGP-Fingerprint: 3CB3B415/2048/4D 96 83 18 2B AF BE 45 D0 07 C4 07 51 37 B3 18
X-URL: http://www.jabberwocky.com/
X-Phase-Of-Moon: The Moon is Waning Gibbous (59% of Full)
X-Current-Email-Backlog: 26
X-Pointless-Random-Number: 157
X-Silly-Header: It sure is.
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
On Thu, Aug 13, 1998 at 02:38:13PM -0500, Mike Nolan wrote:
> Is anyone else having problems with duplicate messages coming from
> subscribers on hotmail? It seems to happen sporadically, and the
> duplicates have different Message-ID headers so I can't filter them out that
> way. It looks like hotmail is using qmail, I don't know if that is a factor.
I haven't seen duplicates, but hotmail seems to do weird things every
other day. Most of the time, they seem to hard bounce mail for no
particular reason (sometimes the error message is for excessive load,
sometimes it's "user unknown" when I *know* the address is good - and
turning around a mailing again will go through fine.)
They're just plain flaky...
David
--
David Shaw | dshaw@cs.jhu.edu | WWW http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~dshaw/
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson
From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 14 01:53:39 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA01015; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 23:06:08 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA01005 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 23:06:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cat.salemcarriers.com (cat.salemcarriers.com [208.134.81.42]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA11673 for ; Wed, 12 Aug 1998 21:34:20 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from yost (Janeway-38.netunlimited.net [208.128.132.87])
by cat.salemcarriers.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id AAA01806
for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 00:40:07 -0400
Message-ID: <199808122130280520.0158A488@mail.salemcarriers.com>
In-Reply-To: <19980805102159.W12173@blank.org>
References: <000801bdbbbc$cb888710$017b7b0a@gillette>
<19980805102159.W12173@blank.org>
X-Mailer: Calypso Version 2.40.35
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 21:30:28 -0400
From: "Spencer Yost"
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Bounces Script
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I am looking for the "Bounces" set of perl scripts that will automatically
delete list members whose mail continually bounces. Basically this
software will add list members whose mail is bouncing to a special "Bounce"
mailing list. The software will then permanently remove the subscriber
from the regular list and the bounces list if their mail continues to fail
in delivery.
While I only know of one site that uses it, I have run across many
references and discussions about it over the last year or two, enough
times to lead me to believe this software is openly distributed. I have
tried to contact one list manager whom I know is using it and received no
response. I have also searched through the list-manager archive and used
the Internet search engines, both to no avail.
Thanks in advance,
Spencer Yost
Owner, ATIS
Plow the Net!
http://www.atis.net
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 8/10/98, at 10:52 PM, Nathan J. Mehl wrote:
>In the immortal words of Micah Thompson (micah@kxan.com):
>>
>> I need more speed!
>> Currently I am running majordomo with a custom perl program written for
>> me by a friend called "splitlist" but it's still too slow. (splitlist
>> takes the subscriber lists, alphabetizes by reverse domain, and spawns
>> off multiple parallel sendmail processes). It is way faster than
>> majordomo alone, but still not enough.
>
>You probably want to look into the following:
>
>1. bulk_mailer, a majordomo add-on that does some of the
> same things as your script does, and a bit more.
>
>2. qmail (www.qmail.org), vmailer (www.vmailer.org), or
> another higher-performance MTA. (LSMTP may or may
> not fit the bill; I've never used it, so cannot comment.)
>
>3. Rob Kolstad of BSDI presented a paper on tuning high-
> use mailing lists at the last USENIX LISA conference.
> The paper may be available somewhere on www.usenix.org.
>
>4. The majordomo-users@greatcircle.com mailing list. :)
>
>> Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something
>> like listserv?
>
>As a rule, the MTA tends to be the speed limiting factor, not
>the MLM. However, if your list is large enough, or you run
>a great number of lists, Listserv might be a win for you on
>other considerations. "Your Mileage May Vary."
>
>> Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily
>> loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic
>> being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler
>> radar). :)
>
>Split your web machine from your mail machine. Really. Or at a minimum
>make sure it's a multiprocessor machine and that the mail spools and
>web directories live on different drives or better yet different
>SCSI controllers. But really, split the functions into two different
>machines. :)
>
>-n
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
> Remember when they told you there'd be no future? Well, this is it.
>---------------------------------------------
---
From list-managers-owner Fri Aug 14 19:38:10 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA22503; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 19:26:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from cyberq.quality.org (cyberq.quality.org [199.181.80.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA22496 for ; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 19:25:55 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from localhost (help@localhost)
by cyberq.quality.org (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id WAA04266;
Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:34:40 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:34:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Bill Casti (System Admin)"
To: Spencer Yost
cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: Bounces Script
In-Reply-To: <199808122130280520.0158A488@mail.salemcarriers.com>
Message-ID:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Look at SmartBounce. See http://www.smartbounce.com
On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Spencer Yost wrote:
> I am looking for the "Bounces" set of perl scripts that will automatically
> delete list members whose mail continually bounces. Basically this
> software will add list members whose mail is bouncing to a special "Bounce"
> mailing list. The software will then permanently remove the subscriber
> from the regular list and the bounces list if their mail continues to fail
> in delivery.
>
> While I only know of one site that uses it, I have run across many
> references and discussions about it over the last year or two, enough
> times to lead me to believe this software is openly distributed. I have
> tried to contact one list manager whom I know is using it and received no
> response. I have also searched through the list-manager archive and used
> the Internet search engines, both to no avail.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Spencer Yost
> Owner, ATIS
> Plow the Net!
> http://www.atis.net
>
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
>
> On 8/10/98, at 10:52 PM, Nathan J. Mehl wrote:
>
> >In the immortal words of Micah Thompson (micah@kxan.com):
> >>
> >> I need more speed!
> >> Currently I am running majordomo with a custom perl program written for
> >> me by a friend called "splitlist" but it's still too slow. (splitlist
> >> takes the subscriber lists, alphabetizes by reverse domain, and spawns
> >> off multiple parallel sendmail processes). It is way faster than
> >> majordomo alone, but still not enough.
> >
> >You probably want to look into the following:
> >
> >1. bulk_mailer, a majordomo add-on that does some of the
> > same things as your script does, and a bit more.
> >
> >2. qmail (www.qmail.org), vmailer (www.vmailer.org), or
> > another higher-performance MTA. (LSMTP may or may
> > not fit the bill; I've never used it, so cannot comment.)
> >
> >3. Rob Kolstad of BSDI presented a paper on tuning high-
> > use mailing lists at the last USENIX LISA conference.
> > The paper may be available somewhere on www.usenix.org.
> >
> >4. The majordomo-users@greatcircle.com mailing list. :)
> >
> >> Is majordomo the way to go with this, or should I look into something
> >> like listserv?
> >
> >As a rule, the MTA tends to be the speed limiting factor, not
> >the MLM. However, if your list is large enough, or you run
> >a great number of lists, Listserv might be a win for you on
> >other considerations. "Your Mileage May Vary."
> >
> >> Oh, the mailing list must run on an already heavily
> >> loaded server which is usually straining to handle all the web traffic
> >> being generated by the bad weather (people looking at my online doppler
> >> radar). :)
> >
> >Split your web machine from your mail machine. Really. Or at a minimum
> >make sure it's a multiprocessor machine and that the mail spools and
> >web directories live on different drives or better yet different
> >SCSI controllers. But really, split the functions into two different
> >machines. :)
> >
> >-n
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------ rg>
> > Remember when they told you there'd be no future? Well, this is it.
> >---------------------------------------------
> ---
>
>
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 17 16:59:21 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA12328; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:31:48 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA12320 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:31:45 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from moat.ieee.org (moat1.ieee.org [199.172.136.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id IAA20517 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 08:46:57 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from aries.ieee.org by moat.ieee.org
via smtpd (for honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) with SMTP; 13 Aug 1998 16:07:24 UT
Received: from mako.ieee.org by aries.ieee.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP
id LAA13337 for ; Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:52:13 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199808131552.LAA13337@aries.ieee.org>
X-Sender: gsantiag@pop.ieee.org
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 11:56:32 -0400
To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Gilberto Santiago
Subject: List Size
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Hi Everyone,
How can I limit the number of subscribers to a list? Let's say 1000 per
list. Let's assume that these lists are open.
Anyone knows the answer?
Any help will be appreciated...
==========================================================================
Gilberto Santiago
Sr. Systems Administrator
IEEE, Information Technology Department
(732) 562-3975
E-mail: g.santiago@ieee.org
==========================================================================
From list-managers-owner Mon Aug 17 17:26:41 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA12594; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:35:05 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id OAA12581 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:35:00 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM (tan7.NCR.COM [192.127.94.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA25273 for ; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:22:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from jabberwocky (jabberwocky.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM [153.64.69.123])
by ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM (8.8.5/8.7.3) with SMTP
id WAA20261 for ; Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:56 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199808150530.WAA20261@ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM>
X-Sender: @
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:06 -0700
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
From: Bill Houle
Subject: vacation autoresponders
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I was just about to turn on my procmail-based vacation autoresponder when I
decided to check first which senders might theoretically get bombarded with
such messages. We all know what trouble a poorly done vacation program can
cause, so I thought I'd look first. My program:
ignores mailer daemons
ignores Precedence bulk/junk
ignores loops to myself
and only responds if To/Cc me
This mimics the Berkeley vacation program and in theory should be pretty
darn safe. But I found a number of "mailing lists" that would get hit.
These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a list address)
and do not utilize Precedence headers. My question: is this a "they screwed
up" situation, or is there something else I could be doing to be more
net-friendly?
--bill
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 02:41:42 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA23934; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 02:08:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from dns.cyberlink.ch (dns.cyberlink.ch [193.246.253.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA23926 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 02:08:37 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from quill (norbert@gate3-11.cyberlink.ch [195.246.74.81])
by dns.cyberlink.ch (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA27310;
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 11:16:47 +0200
Received: (from norbert@localhost)
by quill (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA00760;
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:15:42 +0200
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:15:42 +0200
Message-Id: <199808181015.MAA00760@quill>
From: Norbert Bollow
Prefer-Language: de, en, fr
To: bhoule@conveyanced.com
CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-reply-to: <199808150530.WAA20261@ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM> (message from
Bill Houle on Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:06 -0700)
Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Bill Houle wrote:
> cause, so I thought I'd look first. My program:
>
> ignores mailer daemons
> ignores Precedence bulk/junk
> ignores loops to myself
> and only responds if To/Cc me
[..]
> up" situation, or is there something else I could be doing to be more
> net-friendly?
Make sure that the autoresponder will never send more than one
reply to any given address. (You'll need a simple database for
this.) This will defeat most loops.
Make sure that the autoresponder does not reply to messages with
null reverse path, since those are likely to be bounces, and you
don't want to bother remote postmasters with your vacation
messages.
Finally, if something does go wrong in spite of all the
precautions, people will want to alert the postmaster at your
host about the problem. Therefore, please make sure that someone
is handling postmaster mail even during your absence.
And then, have a great vacation!
Norbert.
--
Norbert Bollow, Zuerich, Switzerland. Backup e-mail address: NB@POBOX.COM
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 12:53:31 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA03767; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:42:24 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from ns.intelenet.net (intelenet.net [204.182.160.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA03760 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:42:13 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from boris.intelenet.net (bob@boris.intelenet.net [207.38.65.11])
by ns.intelenet.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA20665
for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:51:21 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from bob@localhost)
by boris.intelenet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA05284
for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:51:15 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199808181951.MAA05284@boris.intelenet.net>
From: bob@intelenet.net (Bob Myers)
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 12:51:14 -0700
X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92)
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:06 -0700
> From: Bill Houle
> Subject: vacation autoresponders
>
> I was just about to turn on my procmail-based vacation autoresponder when I
> decided to check first which senders might theoretically get bombarded with
> such messages. We all know what trouble a poorly done vacation program can
> cause, so I thought I'd look first. My program:
>
> ignores mailer daemons
> ignores Precedence bulk/junk
Precedence list, too.
--
Bob Myers InteleNet Communications, Inc.
Email: bob@InteleNet.net 18101 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 550
Phone: 714-851-8250 x227 Irvine, CA 92612
Fax: 714-851-1088 http://www.intelenet.net/
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 15:21:53 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA05295; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 15:02:23 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA05288 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 15:02:10 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id RAA04210; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:11:29 -0500 (CDT)
Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.8.7/8.8.2) id RAA28972; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:11:23 -0500 (CDT)
From: "David W. Tamkin"
Message-Id: <199808182211.RAA28972@Venus.mcs.net>
Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders
To: bhoule@conveyanced.com (Bill Houle)
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:11:23 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: <199808150530.WAA20261@ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM> from "Bill Houle" at Aug 14, 98 10:30:06 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
Content-Type: text
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Bill Houle asked,
| My program:
|
| ignores mailer daemons
| ignores Precedence bulk/junk
| ignores loops to myself
| and only responds if To/Cc me
|
| ... But I found a number of "mailing lists" that would get hit.
| These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a list address)
| and do not utilize Precedence headers. My question: is this a "they screwed
| up" situation, or is there something else I could be doing to be more
| net-friendly?
In my viewpoint, it's a they-screwed-up situation, but it's one you have to
deal with. The best bet is to put your vacation routine after those that
file your mail from lists, especially those lists, or to postpone those lists
or sign off them while you're away.
Norbert Bollow's reminder that you should keep a cache of addresses notified
and not send more than one vacation message to any given address during a
given absence doesn't help if those lists direct replies to the poster, un-
less you subscribe to them in digest format.
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 17:03:05 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06552; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:50:12 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sagarmatha.com (chomolongma.sagarmatha.com [209.110.136.129]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA06522 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:49:52 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from james@localhost)
by sagarmatha.com (8.8.8/8.8.8.special) id QAA20691
for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:58:22 -0700
From: "James C. Armstrong"
Message-Id: <199808182358.QAA20691@sagarmatha.com>
Subject: Copyright Issues on a list
To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:58:21 -0800 (PDT)
Reply-To: james@sagarmatha.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I've got something of a dilemma developing on some of the mailing
lists I maintain, and was wondering if anyone here has faced a similar
situation.
I maintain some lists for professional sports teams in the UK. I run
these lists in California. (Rangers football club, Scottish football)
Some members of the lists have occasionally posted copyrighted
material. My intro statement for members strongly discourages this,
but I do not manually approve all postings, nor do I attempt to
censor after the fact.
One of the publishers has recently requested that I stop all copyrighted
material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal
action.
I don't want to moderate the list, I do not have the time. So, I
can't effectively prevent the list members from posting, I can only
retroactively unsubscribe them (but does such a retroactive unsubscribe
open me up for any legal liability? I'd be censoring list members,
and isn't this similar to what Prodigy did?)
Any experience with this? Any opinions?
--
James C. Armstrong, Jr. | "Using Windows NT, which is known to
james@sagarmatha.com | have some failure modes, on a warship
| is similar to hoping that luck will
| be in our favor." Anthony DiGiorgio,
| on the US Navy's decision to use
| Windows NT instead of UNIX.
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 17:22:36 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06664; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:59:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA06657 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:59:19 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from cnorman@localhost)
by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.0/8.9.0/best.sh) id RAA16682;
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:08:34 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 17:08:34 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199808190008.RAA16682@shell7.ba.best.com>
From: Cyndi Norman
CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, cnorman@best.com
In-reply-to: <199808182211.RAA28972@Venus.mcs.net> (dattier@Mcs.Net)
Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders
Reply-to: cnorman@best.com
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
I have a similar predictament. I love the Berkeley vacation program but I
use procmail for other things. Is there a way to simply call the vacation
program on my mail without disabling procmail while I'm away? I'm on a
UNIX system and read my mail here. Why reinvent the wheel?
Cyndi
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
"There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman
something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com
http://www.consultclarity.com
_________________________ Owner of the Immune Lists http://www.best.com/~immune
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 19:21:33 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA08378; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 19:07:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA08371 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 19:07:44 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id VAA02739; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:17:06 -0500 (CDT)
To: Bill Houle
Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM
Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders
References: <199808150530.WAA20261@ncr-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM>
Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.100)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
From: Jason L Tibbitts III
Date: 18 Aug 1998 21:17:05 -0500
In-Reply-To: Bill Houle's message of "Fri, 14 Aug 1998 22:30:06 -0700"
Message-ID:
Lines: 9
X-Mailer: Gnus v5.6.24/Emacs 19.34
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
>>>>> "BH" == Bill Houle writes:
BH> These lists insist on addressing directly to me (instead of a
BH> list address) and do not utilize Precedence headers.
What does the envelope sender look like? I'd ignore anything matching
/owner|request|error/i (and probably a few more).
- J<
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 20:22:37 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA09013; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 19:50:13 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA09001 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 19:49:57 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6])
by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA27173;
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:59:20 -0500
Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA28386; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:59:20 -0500
From: Mike Nolan
Message-Id: <199808190259.VAA28386@celery.tssi.com>
Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list
To: james@sagarmatha.com
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:59:20 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
In-Reply-To: <199808182358.QAA20691@sagarmatha.com> from "James C. Armstrong" at Aug 18, 98 04:58:21 pm
Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
> One of the publishers has recently requested that I stop all copyrighted
> material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal
> action.
Civil action is much more likely. To get a criminal case going, the
publisher would probably have to convince some DA that you were stealing
sufficiently valuable material to make it worth pursuing, and I don't know
that there are many prosecutors out there looking to pursue the Internet
as a serious source of white collar crime based on copyright infringement.
> Any experience with this? Any opinions?
Opinions we all have in abundance. :-)
Most of us are in similar straits, performing moderation after-the-fact, or
as I prefer to label it, moderation by intimidation.
Peer pressure, public rebukes, and swift and sure punishments by the
list manager will IMHO deal with most copyright problems on lists, though
if your subscribers are used to getting away with it, you've got an uphill
battle on your hands regaining some measure of control.
Keep in mind it is YOUR list. If anybody gets sued, YOU are at the top
of the chart. And when you get the usual 'freedom of the press' or
'freedom of speech' moans, remember that freedom of the press guarantees
only apply to those who own the printing press, which in the case of a
mailing list means YOU, and freedom of speech doesn't mean that YOU have
to pay for or build someone else's soapbox.
--
Mike Nolan
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 22:51:31 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA11079; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:34:13 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [207.167.80.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA11071 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:33:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from (zamboni.plaidworks.com [207.167.80.70])
by plaidworks.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA14254
; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:45:08 -0700
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-Sender: chuqui2@plaidworks.com
Message-Id:
In-Reply-To: <199808182358.QAA20691@sagarmatha.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:04:40 -0700
To: james@sagarmatha.com, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM
From: Chuq Von Rospach
Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
At 5:58 PM -0700 8/18/98, James C. Armstrong wrote:
> I maintain some lists for professional sports teams in the UK. I run
> these lists in California. (Rangers football club, Scottish football)
> Some members of the lists have occasionally posted copyrighted
> material. My intro statement for members strongly discourages this,
> but I do not manually approve all postings, nor do I attempt to
> censor after the fact.
My intro statement doesn't discourage it -- it says "don't. Period".
(in more words than that, but that's the effect). When people do do it,
I post to the list telling people not to, and refer to the rules. The
rules specifically say that repeat offenders will be kicked off the
list.
> One of the publishers has recently requested that I stop all copyrighted
> material from going to the list, with the veiled threat of criminal
> action.
And that's why. Mistakes happen. But if you allow them to happen,
you're responsible for them. And if you don't stop them, you're party
to the infringement. You have every right to say "no. period", because
what they're doing is illegal, can get everyone involved sued, and the
list shut down.
> I don't want to moderate the list, I do not have the time. So, I
> can't effectively prevent the list members from posting, I can only
> retroactively unsubscribe them (but does such a retroactive unsubscribe
> open me up for any legal liability? I'd be censoring list members,
> and isn't this similar to what Prodigy did?)
Tell them to stop, and if they don't, nuke them.
Retroactively unsubscribing opens you up to a lot LESS legal liability
than allowing content piracy does. think about that one... If your
rules make it clear it's against the rules, and they break the rules,
what grounds do they have to complain?
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? )
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
+
From list-managers-owner Tue Aug 18 23:03:04 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA11284; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:51:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from califia.sub-rosa.com (califia.sub-rosa.com [207.96.1.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id WAA11277 for ; Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:51:10 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (qmail 19072 invoked by uid 1000); 19 Aug 1998 06:00:32 -0000
Message-ID: <19980819020032.J8825@califia.sub-rosa.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 02:00:32 -0400
From: Michael Handler
To: list-managers@greatcircle.com
Cc: cnorman@best.com
Subject: Re: vacation autoresponders
References: <199808182211.RAA28972@Venus.mcs.net> <199808190008.RAA16682@shell7.ba.best.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.94.2i
In-Reply-To: <199808190008.RAA16682@shell7.ba.best.com>
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Cyndi Norman writes:
> I have a similar predictament. I love the Berkeley vacation program but I
> use procmail for other things. Is there a way to simply call the vacation
> program on my mail without disabling procmail while I'm away?
Sure, you can pipe your mail through arbitrary programs (like vacation)
via commands in your .procmailrc. At the end of your .procmailrc, after
all of your mailing list sorting recipes and the like, add this:
-- begin --
:0 c
* !^FROM_DAEMON
|/path/to/vacation
-- end --
The c flag on the first line makes the recipe a non-delivering carbon-copy
recipe; the message is sent through vacation, but then procmail continues
delivery instructions afterward, so that the mail ends up saved in your
normal inbox.
--
handler@sub-rosa.com
if you cannot conceive of better lines and better times
then let silence bury you -- midnight oil
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 19 10:58:11 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA24275; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 10:35:46 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from sportsurf.net (sportsurf.net [192.41.36.58]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA24264 for ; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 10:35:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from [192.204.56.156] (sss.pittsburgh.net [192.204.56.156]) by sportsurf.net (8.8.5) id LAA18208; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 11:44:57 -0600 (MDT)
Message-Id: <199808191744.LAA18208@sportsurf.net>
Subject: Re: Copyright Issues on a list
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 98 12:51:12 -0500
x-sender: mark@sportsurf.net
x-mailer: Claris Emailer 1.1
From: Mark Rauterkus
To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM
Precedence: bulk
Hi,
A few suggestions: --- to go along with the other bits of great advice
posted so far:
Ask list members to post only POINTERS to the whole article and not the
article itself.
Ask list members to make their comments exceed 2x the length of the
posted article so as to add lots of value to the article. This is a thin
attempt at "fair use."
Ask the publisher to post all their articles to the list -- and give them
a chance to put a tag line of advertisement along with their article.
This way you get in bed with copyright holders.
Ask the publisher to post all their articles to another list that you set
up for them, free of charge. Or, allow for others to post their articles
to that list if the publisher isn't swift to publish the news themselves.
Get permission for this to occur. Then have this "joint-ownership" so
that they can't get you in trouble. So, readers can post articles from
the paper to this list. Then subscribers would have to get on multiple
lists.
Mark Rauterkus
List-Clerk@SportSurf.Net
From list-managers-owner Wed Aug 19 14:16:01 1998
Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA26766; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 13:09:02 -0700 (PDT)
Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id NAA26756 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 19 Aug 1998 13:08:59 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from elvis.vnet.net (elvis.vnet.net [166.82.1.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA18756 for